Unleashing the Animal
by Thralni
Summary: [AU] Your deepest desires can't be ignored, however hard you may try. Twilight fanfic based on the story of the author's coming-out as gay. Slash, Multiple pairings with Jacob.
1. Part 1: Embry

**_ Unleashing the Animal_**

_Your deepest desires can't be ignored, however hard you may try. Twilight fanfic based on the story of the author's coming-out as gay. Slash, Multiple pairing with Jacob._

**A/N:** A story based on the Twilight series of books and movies. I borrow the character names, but for the rest there is absolutely no connection to Twilight. 'Unleashing the Animal' is a work of fiction written by me, Thralni, and is an edited version of a story I wrote a while ago with the same name. It told my coming-out story – now it is re-imagined to fit the looks of the Twilight characters, and instead of being about me, it's about Jacob's fictional coming-out. It was written for my own pleasure without any kind of gain in mind, be it financial or otherwise. I reserve all the rights to Unleashing the Animal, save for the character names; these are owned by Stephenie Meyer.

**A/N 2:** Since the story is already written in full, a short explanation of the layout: There are three parts, each divided into 4 or 5 chapters, and there is an epilogue. My plan is to publish Part2, 3 and the epilogue throughout the coming Sundays. In another three weeks, therefor, this story should be complete.

**Warning**:

This story contains mention and explicit descriptions of gay sex and romance, and frequent angst and drama. You will recognize the character names, but for the rest forget everything you know about the original Twilight character: the characters here tend to be very different. Relationships between people are entirely redefined and _nothing_ follows the Twilight story and plot.

**_Still want to read? Have fun! Leave reviews to let me know what you think!_**

* * *

**_Part 1_**

**_Embry_**

* * *

**1.**

Silence. All that woke him was a ray of light. Cold and blue; a cloudy, winter morning. He shyly opened his left eye. Light peeked inside through his eyelids as he slowly became conscious of the world around him, darkness being lifted from his mind like a veil being lifted from a widow's face when she gives her dead husband a final goodbye-kiss. The right side of his brain was throbbing: a thumping headache like he hadn't had for a while. He cautiously attempted to open his right eye, but with the headache suddenly increasing in magnitude, he wisely chose to close that eye again. With the right eye closed it was sort of bearable. He erected his body, slowly, so as to not aggravate his complaining brain even more, when he became aware of warmth next to him.

He turned his head, and saw a warm, beautiful, sleeping body. He stroked it, gave its warm thigh a small kiss, and got out of bed. As his soft feet touched the cold, unforgiving floor, he shuddered as a spiky tingle launched itself from his lower back up to his neck, exploding in a short but stinging burst of headache. He cringed as the headache enveloped his visual cortex and, like the smoke at yesterday evening's disco engulfing the frantically dancing youth, moved forward to grab and squash his measly, alcohol-ridden prefrontal cortex. And with that, the headache returned to its former, nagging state; a boring pain, like a dog sinks its pointy teeth into a man's fleshy arm. Sunken it deep enough to cause discomfort, but not deep enough to actually pain the man too much, so that it stays in the background; quite like a mosquito in the night: unseen but irritatingly persistent in letting know that it's there. Fortunately, while mosquitoes are rather hard to kill, headaches are somewhat easier to get rid of. At least, what he would do when he were alone, was turn on his computer and put on some classical music. Usually a Mahler or Tchaikovsky symphony. He would then return to bed, close his eyes, and listen to the music unwind; follow it intently, dissecting it as it moved forward, bar to bar, note to note. This worked almost always when he had a hangover. This time though, he was with somebody. Somebody who was still asleep and probably felt as bad as he did. So instead of loud, classical music, the brass playing their endless, dramatic solos, reaching climaxes that came as close to a divine rush of excitement as he would ever feel, he walked to the bathroom and took an aspirin. Much less poetic, but it did its job admirably.

The chilliness of the room made him shudder as he slogged to the kitchenette. He took the half-full pack of coffee and emptied it into his coffee machine, then turned it on. He sat at his table, and stared at the sleeping body in his bed. A smell of coffee swirled in the room, and a few minutes later he poured his first cup of the day; another one of those cold, depressing winter days. It had snowed that night, and the sky was still cloudy. The sun came up, trying desperately to break through the layer of clouds. It resulted in nothing more than the appearance of a veiled, milky yellow orb, almost invisible if you didn't try hard to spot it.

As he stood at the window with his cup of coffee, looking tiredly at the depressing sight of snow covering life outside his window, he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. He felt it running down his back when a second hand appeared: together they embraced his belly. The tender embrace of a body: the warm, female body of the bed was behind him and pressed itself lovingly against him. He turned around. Two, beautiful dark eyes stared at him; the left eye partly veiled by sleek, black hair. He held her with his left hand, holding the cup of coffee with his right hand.

"That was one hell of a party yesterday, right?" he asked, giving her that look that she found so aggravatingly sexy, meanwhile slowly rocking their hips at his lead. There was something mysterious about it that she couldn't put her finger on. "Yeah, it sure was," she answered hoarsely.

They stared each other for a while, smiling quietly and contently. Finally, he broke the silence: "A new year, eh? I hope this one is going to be better than the last one".

"Yep, though my last one wasn't that bad, honestly. The new one is sure starting in a depressing way. And I really shouldn't have had that one extra beer…".

He looked at her as those words rolled out of her mouth, and he felt better. He at least wasn't the only one with a hangover. He smiled, and she smiled back.

"Don't you want an aspirin? If your headache is as bad as mine, you might want to take the whole tube." She laughingly rejected that last offer, taking one aspirin out of the tube and swallowing it with a glass of water.

"You know," she said, "we still have one more week of vacation. Is there anything special you want to do? On the weather forecast they said it will stop snowing soon, too, so if you want to do something with the snow, we'd better hurry."

Ah yeah, it was still vacation. Half happy, half sad, he walked towards her and kissed her smooth hair, caressing it slowly. "I don't know. I'll take a shower first."

"Okay," she replied.

As he stepped into the bathroom, holding a pair of underwear, socks, and a slightly oversized black T-shirt, he wondered why he was feeling sadness about it being vacation. He remembered times when he was happy about it. No school, no homework, no nothing. He was now in university and this mid-winter break was practically the only vacation he would get until summer vacation. Shouldn't he be enjoying these few, free weeks? Unlike others, at his study they didn't have "exam weeks". You know, those weeks where you are supposed to study, but you just sit around bars and get drunk? That's what he at least gathered from some of his less ambitious friends. They'd study for their exam three days in advance and usually get just enough points to pass. Well, not at the biosciences. There you got two weeks of vacation in the whole year. He didn't mind it much; he liked his study and tried to get it right. But still, vacation was nice. So why did he feel the way he felt? He felt empty. You could throw a rock at him, and if it hit, you'd hear the sound of a gong. The sound of a hollow object; not the measly "thump" of a fleshy, organ-filled capsule designed to move around, eat, sleep, drink and have sex.

As he entered the shower, opened the tap and felt the cold drops of a new year rain down upon him, his thoughts started drifting. Towards his work, his study, his orchestra. He played the bassoon. It usually meant he had rather interesting parts, but since he was the second bassoon rather than the first, he rarely had the nicest of solos. One minor annoyance of this instrument was that, when he told people about the fact that he played the bassoon, those that new something about music always joked about his instrument's name. They'd go:

"Ya know what a _bassoon_ is called in Dutch, hm?" while slowly moving their face closer to his with an idiotic grimace that he'd sometimes love to slap off their face. When he then shook his head slowly in annoyance (since he knew what was coming), they blurted out the clue:

"It's called a _faggot_! So, you are a faggot-_player_, which makes _you_ pretty much of a faggot too, eh?"

They'd laugh with innocent joy, but Jacob could get pretty annoyed by that joke. Not so much because he had heard it endless times before, and not even because he was jokingly accused of being gay; it was because these people had such pleasure in joking _about_ gays.

_If I'd be gay myself, they wouldn't dare make that joke, that's for sure_, was the conclusion Jacob always ended up drawing.

Thinking about these people, he realized he genuinely missed his _other_ fellow orchestra players. During the vacation there were no rehearsals; those were to commence again Wednesday next week. They always rehearsed on Wednesdays. He generally enjoyed good contact with some of the players, but admittedly this was not enough. There were several guys that he particularly wanted to meet up with in the break, just to talk. Honestly, he had already tried to approach one of them, but the casual chatting he had initiated didn't last long. After a minute of awkward silence they'd break it up with an uncomfortable "see you later", accompanied by a clumsy smile. He'd then walk off to one his usual friends, cursing under his breath at his failure.

He closed the tap and left the shower cubicle, dried himself up and put on his underwear. Glancing in the mirror, it seemed obvious he suffered from a significant hangover. A shave would have made him look better, but he was too lazy for that on this cold New Year's Day. His dark hair, cut short, was a mess. He'd comb later, if they were to leave the house at all that day. Instead he got out of the bathroom and walked over to his girlfriend, who was now quietly drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book.

"What are you reading? Don't tell me you are still reading that same book…" he asked, gently lifting the book so he could read the title.

"Oh come on Jacob, it's not like you don't do the same. You've been reading the Brothers Karamazov for what, 5 years now?" she answered, grinning sarcastically. Sighing, he nodded.

"In my defence, it's a very _thick_ book! About three times the amount of pages as that book of yours. And no pictures, either. It's pretty hard-core." Bella erupted in a burst of laughter, then looked at him playfully.

"Ooh, aren't you feeling great about that achievement, aren't you? Indeed, a book without pictures is in a league that I certainly can't ever dream of reaching!"

Again she started laughing and he smiled at her, pouring himself another cup of coffee. He sat down next to her and looked her in the eyes, then grabbed the Brothers Karamazov and started reading.

* * *

**2.**

The first days of the new year and the last days of the vacation went by in the same style as that morning: in a blur, with multiple hangovers, sleeping late, and lots of coffee. The first days at university of the new year were equally thrilling. He was now doing an internship, studying the internal anatomy of the frog heart, something he actually really enjoyed. Most days were pretty much the same, but then it was Wednesday. He woke up, realized this merry fact, and got out of bed. Whistling he made himself a coffee, sat down and read the newspaper. This was and had always been his early morning ritual, and he stuck to it like a fly sticks to sugar. Soon afterwards he cheerily stepped on his bike to dissect some more frog hearts at university.

It wasn't because of the frog hearts that he was in such a good mood. Today he would have a rehearsal with his orchestra again. Seeing his friends would be nice, but what he was really looking forward, was to try to approach that guy again. Sadly, rehearsals were in the evening, and it was morning now. Twelve, long hours stood between him and the rehearsal. Still, it was bearable after not having had a rehearsal for two weeks and a half. Another half day didn't seem so problematic in that light… Nevertheless, those hours were the longest hours he had experienced in weeks. They went by like syrup coming out of a flask: hardly at all. When it was finally time to go home and have a quick dinner, he was almost fast asleep. In this state of half slumber, he cycled home, nearly running over an old lady in the process. Fortunately he arrived home unscathed, cooked himself a quick pasta, ate, and left again for the rehearsal.

As he arrived at the rehearsal's location, he parked his bike and somewhat nervously climbed the few, stone steps to the front door of the building. The old, heavy door creaked horribly when he pushed against it, using his bodyweight to aid him. Whistling to himself, he stepped through the harsh corridors, which echoed every sound that was made within. The building was quite old, probably from the 19th century. The floors were a mosaic of cold, white and black stone tiles on which the heels of Jacob's shoes click-clacked harshly. The walls were a combination of ornate pillars and greyish/white marble plates with vague, dark stripes running through them. It's the kind of building you'd expect an embassy to be housed in, not a cultural centre for the "young of spirit", as he had read on some sign inside the building.

Finally, he arrived at the rehearsal's hall, which was the auditorium of the building. As he stepped inside, his eyes shooting nervously from corner to corner, person to person, his gaze travelled the hall to search for the guy that had intrigued him for so long already. And there he was, talking to some girl, his curly hair dancing around as he tilted his head, smiled lovingly at the girl and hugged her as their lips met and shared a quick kiss. He never quite understood what was so intriguing about this particular guy, but he did know he didn't like seeing him kissing with _her_. This wasn't the first time he had felt like that. He had previously felt attracted to certain men also, but not for a specific reason that he could identify. He assumed it had to do with a certain nonchalance that he had always wanted to have, but never did. This guy had it. And for some reason, this meant Jacob _had_ to get into contact with him. The urge burned inside his body, gushing painfully in his intestines like acid. There was one way to get rid of it, and though it seemed simple, the idea made him nervous as hell and increasingly fidgety: _talk to him_.

Jacob entered the hall proper and said hello to some people, dropped his gear, helped set up the room… and when he finally decided to just _do it_, the guy was gone. To his disappointment, he didn't see him anywhere. _Must have gone to the toilet_.

One of his friends passed by. Jacob quickly tapped him on the shoulder, seeking his attention.

"Hey, that guy who plays cello, with the short-ish black hair and all… you know whom I'm talking about?" This description was greeted with a vague look of recognition.

"Hm, I think I know whom you are talking about. Sort of the same height as you, right?" Jacob nodded, "Yeah, that's him. Do you know his name?"

Again a vague look of recognition, head tilted sideways slightly. You could practically hear the grey machinery inside the skull grinding.

"Let me think," he mumbled, as he cupped his chin thoughtfully. "I think it might be Embry you're talking about, but I'm not entirely sure. Why are you asking anyway?" His friend looked at him curiously.

"Oh, you know, just curious. Thought I recognized him from somewhere else…" That was a disappointing answer, apparently, judging by his friend's look.

"Oh. Anything else?"

"Nah, that's all, thanks man." With that his friend, a violinist, walked over to his seat and sat down, and so did Jacob.

And there he was again: Embry had just re-entered the hall. From a distance he seemed even more intriguing than from up close. Another guy that he had never seen closely followed him. He was about the same size, with brown hair, blue jeans, grey shoes and a grey sweater over a white shirt. He looked nice. Plus, he was another violinist who went to sit right next to his friend.

_I'll ask that guy's name during the break_, Jacob thought as his eyes lingered on the newcomer. He then went to ready his instrument to play some quick notes to warm up his lips and his instrument. He closely followed the shorter, black-haired guy from the corners of his eyes while he went to take his violin and hastily walked to his seat, greeting people as he walked past them. The conductor had arrived in the meantime and obviously wanted to start the rehearsal, nervously ticking with his baton on his steel music stand, leaning on it with a particularly bored expression on his face.

As soon as everybody had taken a seat, the conductor rose from his leaning posture and Let his gaze glide over the orchestra one time before starting to speak. He first wished everybody a happy new year and made some general announcements, saying that they were going to play Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony at the next concerts; that it went okay but they weren't there yet; that he hoped, saying this while grinning broadly, that people had done some rehearsing during the vacation, and not only hung around in bars and got drunk (a mixture of laughing, applauding and confirmative shouts filled the hall at that point). Soon after they started playing. Of course by then Jacob's lips and instrument had cooled down again, so that the start of the rehearsal didn't go as smoothly as he'd liked. Neither did it go as smoothly as the conductor liked, judging by his awkward looks in Jacob's direction, after which he glanced around the orchestra, identifying mistakes and the people who made them as they continued playing. As always, the rehearsal itself wasn't very exciting. He looked forward to the break, meanwhile wondering about the new guy. The new guy was even more intriguing than Embry. Again Jacob wasn't sure what it was that made him that interesting.

At break time Jacob launched forward to greet the new guy, practically dumping his instrument in its case out of excitement. Anyway it wouldn't have made much of a difference if he'd arrived first at the cafeteria of the cultural centre: the violinist was lagging behind. So instead he took it slowly, eyeing the guy as he carefully took apart his instrument and stored them in its case.

As if it was planned that way, the moment Jacob was done packing his instrument the new guy finished putting his violin in his case also. As he stepped in the direction of the hall's exit, Jacob hastily stepped in his direction, catching up with him in one of the cold halls. While walking he greeted him, saying the inane line he had come up with: "Haven't seen you before here, or is my memory that blasted by all the alcohol?"

Fortunately for him, the new guy responded with a cheerful smile and a conversation was started quite merrily. He was indeed new, had come from the other side of the country to study here, and his name was Jasper. They chatted for the rest of the break, talking about a variety of subjects. None of it was even remotely personal, but fun and interesting nonetheless. They shared a similar taste in movies, and as such they vowed to go see a movie sometime in the future. Feeling happy and refreshed, Jacob sat down with his bassoon for the second half of the rehearsal, which went by like a breeze. Later he lay in bed, happy to have gotten acquainted with such a nice guy.

* * *

**3.**

The weeks went by, and February turned into March. And with the coming of March, spring was in the air. The sun curiously peeked out of the clouds, wishing to see what was happening at the other side of that previously impenetrable wall of fog and mist, having been in the dark for such a long time. And with the appearance of the sun, being outside became pleasant again after the frigid winter they had endured. Even though it was still too cold to walk around without a coat, people left their gloves and hats at home. Birds were chirping in the morning, forming the first of nature's early-morning choirs of the year.

The rehearsals had been going on now for a few weeks, and he had enjoyed them all. Of course because he liked Tchaikovsky's sixth, but it had more to do with the appearance of Jasper than anything else. Soon they would have the first concert of the year, followed by a party at a local club. It would be his first party with this orchestra, for, like Jasper, he was quite new to the orchestra. For some reason he always got a bit nervous when doing 'firsts' in a new social environment. This 'first party' was one of them. It was a bigger source of stress and anticipation even than the concert, even though he realized full well that it's usually the other way around for _normal_ people. Still, that's the way it was and that's how it had been for as long as he could remember. Besides, he had played in orchestras for several years now and as such had played in various concerts. He knew what it was all about and how it worked – no reason to get nervous about it.

With every week, the concert and the party drew closer, until finally it was _the_ day. Jacob stood in front of the mirror. He had elected to wear his suite at home and not take his normal clothing with him, not even to change into them after the concert despite them being insanely more comfortable. He figured he looked smart in his suite. That bow tie made him look elegant. Before he left, he checked everything a final time, did his hair in such a way that it seemed both organized and messy, and sprayed himself with some extra deodorant.

He organized his bag, put in the music they were going to play and his deodorant. Checking again if he hadn't forgotten anything, he closed it, took his bassoon and left, slamming the front door of his building with a loud bang as the lock fell into place. The sun was shining brightly on his face as a cold spring breeze caressed his cheeks and played around the exterior of his nose, causing Jacob to sneeze abruptly. A few birds that had been sitting in the tree above him flew away with loudly flapping wings, scared by the sudden burst of air escaping Jacob's mouth.

They were performing Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony for the first time tonight. He had always loved that first movement especially. It started so depressingly, with a fragile bassoon solo. Another highlight was the climax, brought on by the trombones, that frequently so tragic instrument. As his conductor had said: the trombones are the sound of impending doom, and he was quite right. So different are the final minutes of the symphony, in which it always felt like Tchaikovsky got to terms with something. A new, peaceful dawn, following a storm. The skies are blue and cloudless, and the air was washed clean of pollutants by strong winds and rain.

What it was that Tchaikovsky got to terms with was unknown. All kinds of rumours circulated. One of them was that the man was secretly gay and in love with a distant nephew of his, or something along those lines. Can you imagine living such a double life? Jacob quietly smirked. He was happy that wasn't him. What a life that would be. Always in hiding for the world. At least he and Bella could walk through the park, hold hands and kiss freely, whenever and _wherever_ they wanted. For gay men this is still neigh impossible without getting weird looks from passers-by. Maybe even getting beaten up. Get beaten up for loving another human being who happens to be of the same sex as they themselves are. He wasn't sure whether he could live like that. Fortunately, he didn't _have_ to live like that. He was straight.

He _is_ straight.

Already humming Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony, Jacob arrived at the concert hall. The orchestra uses a van to transport the heavy and bulky instruments from their rehearsal location to whatever place they're performing at. So, when he arrived, the van was already being unloaded. He usually hoped to arrive after the van was unloaded, so that he wouldn't have to feel guilty about not helping, but today he threw his bike against a tree and walked over to the van to help, still with his bag and bassoon bouncing around on his back. He was greeted enthusiastically and soon they were all getting the basses out, putting each one on the stage where all the chairs were already set in grand orchestra formation. In the meantime people were slowly dripping in, walking in lazily and without any apparent nervousness, calmly chattering and laughing at each other. Some of them had reached the changing rooms and were putting their suits on. Not Jacob though, since he already wore his suit. Instead he was chatting with some friends, while eying Jasper and Embry stealthily. Both of them were gorgeous. Being in an orchestra has the benefit of changing clothes together. If you are in an orchestra with mostly ugly people, that blessing becomes a curse. Fortunately Jacob had nothing to worry about.

His mouth had slowly curled into a smile, when he was suddenly awoken from his dreamy state of appreciation when his phone rang. Nervously he reached for the ringing piece of apparatus and recognized the number as being Bella's.

_Damn! Completely forgot that she was coming also!_

He answered the phone, turning visibly vermillion. He quickly walked outside, greeting Bella with the stammer of somebody who is caught in the act. "Hey hun, I'm so sorry I didn't call you, are you okay?"

"Yes, yes I am, are you okay though? You sound nervous. Anyway, doesn't matter. I'll be there in about ten minutes before the concert starts. I'm still caught up with something for my internship. They want me to ready some plants for an experiment tomorrow…"

Jacob heard the news but didn't really listen to it. His thoughts were still in the changing rooms. "Yeah, sure, good luck and see you soon. Bye!" Jacob replied, absent-mindedly, his thoughts still swirling around Jasper's half-naked body in the changing room.

After hanging up Jacob made his way back to the changing room. Embry and Jasper wore their suits, bow ties and everything; an elegant duo. While he was eyeing them, his violinist friend poked him.

"Hey man, are you okay? You seem kind of lost in thought. Nothing troubling you I hope?" Jacob was startled for a moment and then realized his thoughts had indeed been drifting about the room again.

"Heh, I'm fine, don't worry. Just a little nervous I guess. Anyway, it's time, let's get our instruments and get seated. The concert is supposed to start in fifteen minutes. Tchaikovsky's sixth eh? Nervous?"

"Nah," his friend replied. "I'm okay."

Jacob regained control over his thoughts, took his gear and instrument and went to the stage. He got seated, took the instrument, and started playing some quick notes.

"Jacob!"

A soft voice next to him: Bella had made it into the hall and stood next to him to wish him luck. Jacob gave her a quick smile; whispered "Have fun!" and ushered her to get seated. The lights dimmed, the conductor appeared, clapping of hands; silence. The concert began and ended faster than he had thought. They played through the symphony, the strings meticulously playing every note in increasing excitement toward the agitation, depression and disappointment that is ultimately portrayed in the trombone's dramatic climax, a loud orgy of sound, structured to form the perfect theme, announcing the beginning of the end, impending doom.

And there he was: the new violinist. Viciously assaulting his instrument with the bow, to support the heavy aggravation in the trombones, his strong right arm sliding the bow left and right, his gaze fixed on the sheets of music in front of him, his mighty chest heaving, in order to supply the body with the oxygen it so required.

Then there was nothing. Woodwind and brass were calm and at rest. They had reached the end of the movement. As the strings entered their accompanying pizzicatos, the trumpets and French horns played their theme of peaceful liberation. It sounded like a new beginning to Jacob. A breaking dawn on a cloudless winter morning. And as the trombones played the ending theme once more, a calm solo in which you could almost see the blossom fall down trees, covering the grass in a pink blanket, he looked at the new violinist.

Three movements later and the concert was over. A clapping audience, the spotlights shining brightly upon the orchestra. Everybody loved it. Quickly all musicians went to the changing rooms. Except Jacob had nothing to change to, so he simply packed his gear, gave the changing Jasper another look and went outside to find Bella. She was standing at the entrance of the changing rooms and grabbed him as soon as she saw him.

"That was wonderful! Truly wonderful! So much emotion, tension… It's been some time since I heard it played in such a vibrant and intimate way." Jacob smiled quietly at her.

"Right, you now go to your party. I will be meeting some of my friends. We're going to watch Twilight, doubt you would like it anyway", she teased him.

"Heh, I doubt it also. It's all naked werewolf and vampire action, isn't it? Perfect for teenage girls who haven't had any action yet." He laughed, even as Bella punched him for that.

"Ouch, why did you do that!"

"Because you were being a jerk, as always", she stated semi-seriously, laughing about Jacob's girly shriek. "Right then, see you later! Give me a kiss".

Bella departed. Jacob waited around a bit for his friends to be ready to go to the party Jasper soon approached him, asked if he was going for some dancing too and if he knew where the club was. Jacob sort of knew, but just in the event he would be wrong, wanted to wait for some other people.

Fortunately they didn't have to wait long. Together, forming a group of six, they walked to the club. Along the way he found some time to chat with Jasper. Admittedly, his memories of the rest of the night would be rather vague. One thing he did remember though: when he left and said goodbye to the other guys, Jasper practically squashed him in a tight embrace. He was probably drunk, but Jacob was pleasantly surprised nonetheless. It had been some time since he was hugged this ferociously. As he left the club, he hummed the end of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony. Humming it over and over again, he walked into the night.

* * *

**4.**

April started as almost any other month. He woke up, drank his coffee, read the newspaper and checked Facebook. Afterwards he left for his internship, cycling along canals and over roads, all with trees whose blossom and leaves were starting to grow. It was getting warmer, much to the delight of not only Jacob, but also the people around him. The shining sun has a curious effect on people, especially after winter: like mice smelling cheese, everybody comes out of their little holes, steps on bicycles, into cars, busses or trains, and indulge themselves in the gentle warmth of the spring sunshine. Sitting in the park, on the beach or just along one of the canals in the city, people were everywhere. Sadly, like any other day, Jacob had to go to his internship. Fortunately, he had several breaks, so that he was able to catch some of sun's rays at least part of the day. He would sit outside with some of his colleagues, and often also with Bella, for lunch, or just a short coffee break.

The internship was going well. Recently a Swedish professor, by the name of Jens Amdahl, had visited his supervisor. The latter had asked Jacob to prepare a short talk, which to his and his supervisor's delight had apparently intrigued Prof. Amdahl. That day Jacob came home to find an email in his inbox, by Prof. Amdahl, asking him to keep in contact and inviting him to a small symposium. Jacob had felt elated, truly happy for the first time in a long while. It was true: ever since that party, and Jasper's enthusiastic goodbye hug, Jacob had not been the same. He had been feeling empty, constantly yearning for something that he could not describe. It made him feel helpless. Also Bella, whom he saw regularly, noticed Jacob's mood had darkened. She had repeatedly asked him about it, inquiring what's wrong, what had happened or whether he wanted to talk about it, all to no avail. Jacob had remained shut. Nobody really noticed what was brewing inside him. Bella came closest to unlocking the mystery, but she had never pressed on.

The highlight of the recent weeks had been the orchestra rehearsals. They still played Tchaikovsky's sixth. They had another concert in July where they would play this piece, and apparently the conductor wanted to keep it in the program until at least the December Christmas performances. They would rehearse the first movement over and over again, and with every time the trombones reached their climactic moment of doomed fate, he would feel a tiny bit emptier as his gaze lingered on Jasper.

The worst thing was that he didn't know why he would feel this way. He had been invited to a symposium in Sweden, where he would no doubt meet top scientists in his field; he had a lovely girlfriend; two loving parents; a great home and he felt lucky to have the friends he had. There was absolutely no reason to feel the way he did. What then, was this feeling of helplessness? Like a stinging thorn in his heart; one that he was afraid to remove. Because when he removed it, there was no telling what vile muck would spout out. And so he kept it in there, tucked away under layers of organs and flesh, hidden from the world. In the meantime, the thorn dug in deeper.

The weeks blew past like the April spring, and finally the moment came to go to Sweden. He had been looking forward to that symposium for a while now. Amongst all the confusion, this trip had been like an anchor point – something that he knew was going to happen and could possibly bring him great benefits. He felt like it could mean the beginning of an actual career. Besides, it meant getting away from the confusion he experienced at home. He and Bella had even planned a small vacation after it.

The symposium was in Stockholm, so they had booked a SAS flight to and from Stockholm. Even though the symposium itself took only a few days, they had decided to stay another two weeks, just for fun. And so they were packing their bags, this afternoon, in order to leave for the airport the next day. Their flight left in the morning. They would go by train, most probably greeted by Jacob's mother who had come to say "goodbye", "take care", and more of that motherly stuff. Jacob appreciated it of course, even though he rarely acted that way. This would be the first plane trip he would be doing without his parents and he was quite nervous despite knowing exactly how all the procedures went. At least he was with Bella…

The next morning they were at the train station rather early, and indeed Jacob's mother came running onto the platform. Slightly panting, she apologized, thinking she'd be late. Of course she wasn't – she was always at least half an hour early. It didn't take long for the train to arrive, for them to get in and ride it to the airport. As they sat in the train, Bella looked at Jacob. Even though he was seemingly excited about this trip, she couldn't help but notice something was amiss.

"Are you feeling okay," she asked worriedly. Jacob hardly reacted, gave her a faint smile and looked out the window. Truth was he didn't quite know.

"Are you nervous about the flight?"

Another faint smile, followed by a soft "I guess…"

They remained quiet for the rest of the trip, occasionally mentioning something they saw along the tracks. Railroad workers eating breakfast, a couple of ravens, a small bird of prey sitting on a pole.

Jacob was happy when they finally arrived at the airport. Check-in, baggage drop-off and customs were passed quickly. Soon they sat at the Schengen terminal of the airport, drinking a cup of Star Bucks coffee. It tasted okay – better than what he drank at home anyway. As they sat there and drank, the seconds became minutes, until Bella looked on her watch and commented that boarding would start soon. They took their bags and went to concourse C, Gate 18. There they sat waiting, staring out of the windows, watching planes roll by slowly on the taxiways, or race forward on the runways.

Meanwhile Jacob had put earphones in and was listening to Tchaikovsky's sixth, hoping it would calm him down. And as Jacob sat on that chair, in the waiting room of the gate, listening to that dramatic piece of music, everything came crushing down on him; like books, stacked one on top of the other on a shelve that sooner or later would give way under the stress of increasing weight; a weight it was never built to handle. Cracks appear. Cracks become tears, and tears lead to ultimate collapse. Similarly, his heart cracked under the pressure of silent yearning, by crushing forces of frustration and debilitating amounts of confusion. The thorn that had been in his heart since that fateful party had almost reached his heart's core – had drilled itself through the thick, muscular wall of the ventricles, forcing itself into the very fabric of his emotional machinery. This incessant drilling created the first cracks, akin to the shelve cracking under the weight of books. He bit his lower lip hard as he felt a tear coming up in his left eye – thank god Bella was sitting on his right! He closed his eyes, listened to the music as the trombones launched into their solos once again.

_Fuck, why now!_

He excused himself and hurriedly walked to the men's toilets, where he locked himself in one of the stalls. Violently he lowered the toilet seat, which noisily clattered onto the ceramic toilet bowl, and sat down on it. The earphones still in his ears and the trombones raging, he held his tightly clenched fists against his face and pressed hard, so that his cheeks became sore and red. His eyelids were firmly closed: he hoped that the mental picture of Jasper, this deceptively beautiful boy, flashing in front of his eyes like a carrot held out in front of a horse, would be expelled once and for all from his obsessed mind if only he would manage to seal his eyes tightly _enough_. His heart cringed, tying itself into a knot out of pure agony, in response to Jasper's form, swirling in front of his eyes. His body trembled with raging emotions of yearning and mounting suffocation.

_I miss him, so, so much!_

Tears started streaming freely down his cheeks, dripped down on the floor and created a small puddle. He cried silently. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the boarding announcement for their flight. The image of Bella flashed in front of his eyes, enraging him;

agonizing him;

_suffocating_ him;

_killing_ _him_.

Her presence, her very _existence_ made things so much worse; so much fucking _worse_!

He felt exasperated. So, _so_ tired. Everything went black and silent, as time seemed to come to a standstill, while one, simple message started to repeat itself, droning in his head endlessly, drowning out all other sounds:

_I have to see Jasper. _

_I _must_ see Jasper. _

_If I do not see him, it will be the end of me. _

_I will not reach the end of the day without seeing him._

After what seemed like ages of thought-blunting repetition, slowly by slowly the world came back to him. First his brain restarted processing visual stimuli. It was as if he sat in a plane that broke through a layer of thick clouds: slowly, a more in-focus picture replaced the fuzziness in his brain, so that he remembered where he was. Second, his sense of hearing returned. The sixth symphony's first movement had almost come to an end, and the woodwind and brass, accompanied by soft string pizzicatos, entered their final theme of hope and expectation. Sensations of pain re-appeared. He had a mild headache and his heart was racing, pumping blood around his body as if he had been exerting himself physically. He started regaining full consciousness as his thought processes started picking up speed, restoring his thinking to its normal level of functioning.

Things started to click. His pupils dilated and his eyes widened in horror as his subconscious mind fabricated the string of calculations, ideas and theories that led to one, inescapable conclusion; one that, upon taking it over, paralyzed Jacob's conscious mind before finally commencing the transformation of subconscious intuition to conscious thought; commencing the stammering formulation of a sentence that expressed a conclusion that made the hairs in his neck stand upright with fright: _I am… – I mean, I can't possibly be…_

Suddenly he heard the voice of Bella, prompting the halting of this sentence's full articulation, replacing it instead with a much less controversial thought: _Shit, the flight!_

He quickly dried the remainder of his tears, came out of the stall, washed his face and walked out of the restroom hastily, greeted by a worried Bella.

"I'm so, so sorry!" Jacob immediately said, his arms still trembling and his face noticeably swollen and with the red eyes of somebody who was grieving.

"By god Jacob… what – what _happened_ to you?" she replied in utter amazement.

He wished he could tell her that, but he himself had no idea what process had started up deep within him.

_If she were worried before, she must be in panic by now_, Jacob thought. "Let's go to the plane, we have to board it otherwise we will miss it. I'm fine, don't worry…"

He hoped he had managed to calm her at least a little bit, though chances of that were slim. They boarded the SAS McDonnell-Douglas MD-80 quietly. The interior was quite nice, with the characteristic blue and silver being the predominant colours in the cabin. They got seated on the left side of the plane, where there were double seats – the other side of the plane had a triple arrangement and they didn't fancy somebody else sitting next to them.

The flight proceeded calmly. They had left at exactly the correct time and the pilot expected them to land five minutes earlier than planned. At least, that's what he had said using the PA system. When the engines had started, and the lights in the cabin had blinked while the aircraft's systems were powered up for take-off, he hoped he would survive this trip.

* * *

**5.**

The symposium was short but sweet. When they had arrived in Stockholm, they had looked around town, and when the symposium had started, Bella went for shopping and that kind of stuff. In the evening, when the only things left on the program were the parties, she re-joined him. Everybody loved Bella, and he felt proud to be able to say that he was _her_ boyfriend, and not anybody else's. He had met and talked to lots of people and he might have even secured a spot for an internship. In his excitement he had forgotten all about Jasper, but those memories were to be awakened soon enough, albeit in another form.

After merely two days, the symposium had ended, and the first week of May had begun. This was also their last night in Stockholm; the next day, in the afternoon, they would be taking the bus to Uppsala. To celebrate the ending of a nice symposium and the start of a relaxing vacation amongst the pine trees and great lakes of one of the Viking lands, they went into Stockholm's centre one last time. They entered a bar with some obviously Swedish text written above the door that they didn't even bother decipher. Inside they sat at a table, looking around the bar. There were quite a lot of men, but since the bartender was a duo of a guy and girl and there were at least _some_ girls around, they decided to stay. In the first few minutes after they had arrived, a batch of girls had also showed up, happily greeted by one of the batches of men. The bar had the shape of a very long, rather wide corridor, with a sudden turn to the right at the very back. Lights were moving around in that area; they assumed it to be some kind of dancing area. In the part of the bar where they were sitting there was a row of tables against the window, looking out over the street. It had started raining and people were hurrying back home. Used to rain or not, nobody really got a liking for it, that was for sure.

"I'll get us a drink", Jacob offered. "Whadaya gonna have?" Bella had a quick thought, responded she wanted a glass of red wine. He himself would have a beer, of course.

_Typical_, he thought, while he walked to the bartender. This gave him a look, slight grin and eyes saying _pleasure_ – the guy was beautiful and suave as hell. Stammering slightly now, Jacob asked for "one beer and a glass of wine, please."

He didn't quite know where to look when he handed the bartender the cash, took the drinks and walked back to their table. After he had sat down and looked at the bartender once more, he saw he was looking back at him, still with that smile. He was relieved when a customer demanded his attention, forcing him to tear his electrifying gaze off of him – directing it at the customer instead.

That guy was actually more beautiful than the bartender. He seemed somewhat taller than Jacob, with dark hair; pitch black with copper-coloured highlights, though this was probably a trick of the light. He wore a black T-shirt with a V-neck and had some kind of silver necklace. His blue jeans, faded and worn-out, fit him really well, giving him a flair of intriguing nonchalance. His shoes were a typical type of Puma sneakers that were so fashionable back home: black with that signature white Puma-stripe that wraps around the back of the shoe. He wore several wristbands: on his right hand a broad, brown leather one without any special markings, and a smaller, silver one of a type he'd always seen for sale on vacation in Hungary. On his left wrist he wore one of those silver metal-banded wristwatches and one more of those slim, silver wristbands. On the whole, this guy looked amazing. Sadly, he couldn't really see his face.

Unexpectedly the guy turned his head and shot Jacob a body-stirring look. Brown eyes, set in a beautifully proportioned, tanned, youthful, almost boyishly Hispanic face, pierced Jacob's. For a few seconds he couldn't breathe. His nose was just perfect for his almost round face, and his mouth was small and sweet. His black hair was styled in a way that had every one of his neatly cut hairs pointing forward, to come together in a small crest that fit his face perfectly. A faint smile, present on the Hispanic's face when he first looked at Jacob, had faded at first, its place taken by a frown of surprised captivation, but it had quickly returned and it grew larger with increasing warmth and pleasantness.

Startled by the sudden eye contact, his heart pounding, Jacob hastily, guiltily even, turned his head towards the window, but couldn't help himself and looked back again. The customer was already walking to the back of the bar by now, carrying a few beers. Even though he wore a black, rather worn-out leather jacket, he could see that the guy's torso had a perfect triangular shape. Jacob, not noticing it himself, had started smiling vaguely, resting his head on his palm, his arm resting on the table. As the customer took a seat, ready to swivel his body so as to sit with his back to Jacob, the guy's eyes shot at him once more. Electrified, a spark bolted down Jacob's body straight to his groin, causing his calculated sip of beer to turn into a hasty gulp that had the beer go down the wrong shaft altogether. As his body started coughing uncontrollably to get that junk out of its lungs, he glanced over to the guy and saw he had taken a different seat – one where he would face Jacob, not the back wall of the bar. As Jacob choked on his drink, the Hispanic's face had lightened up with a new smile that exposed some of his perfectly white teeth.

"_Did you see that?!_" Bella whispered excitedly, rudely yanking Jacob out of his state of dreamy entrancement upon hearing her utterance and feeling her pulling his sleeve.

"What," Jacob mumbled somewhat absent-mindedly, adding "See what?" His gaze lingered on the youthful beauty on the other side of the bar. After a few moments he was however finally able to tear his eyes off of him, though rather reluctantly, and fix them instead on Bella, who was obviously annoyed with his slow reaction.

"Come on, you must have seen _something_. That guy was _totally_ flirting with me!" That comment caught him entirely by surprise. He let out a sigh of relief.

_Jeez, of course, she's probably right. Sometimes I'm just so…_

His sudden feeling of relief at the news that he wasn't being hit on (although, admittedly, the fact that such a good-looking guy would hit on him would have made Jacob feel pretty great about himself), suddenly evaporated when a certain three-letter word jumped at him from a dark and abandoned corner of the depths of his mind, completing the sentence this very same mind had attempted to formulate a few days earlier in the airport's restroom. Back from the gallows, it leaped into his thoughts the way a leopard launches itself onto an unsuspecting antelope. He thought it before he even realized it.

_gay._

Jacob felt weak. The earth beneath him made way and he was falling down for what seemed like eternity, into the coldest, darkest ocean he had ever seen. He nearly drowned in the ice-cold waters of oblivion. Exasperated, lost in thought and tired, he took his beer and drank the remainder of the glass's intoxicating content in one giant gulp, put it back on the table, excused himself and stood up. He mumbled to Bella something about needing to go to the toilet for a few minutes, using the beer and his undersized bladder as an excuse. In reality, he had to get away from this world for a few minutes, and the men's restroom seemed like the perfect place to do that without arousing suspicion regarding either his aroused physical state of being, or his depressed mental state of being.

He made his way to the men's restroom, somewhat hurriedly and without looking in any other direction than the door that had the well-known male figure on it. He pressed against the metal plate on the door, and stepped inside. This restroom was somewhat more spacious than he had expected. Immediately to his left were three urinals, one next to the other. Right in front of him were two stalls, with "normal" toilets inside them. None of them were taken. To his right there were three sinks, with garbage bins to the left and right of them, a paper towel dispenser above each bin. Above the sinks were mirrors, reflecting the murky restroom lights. Jacob walked to the sink farthest from the door.

The room twirled around Jacob, thoughts of disorientation filling his mind, as he clenched the sink forcefully with trembling arms and leaned onto it heavily. After a minute, in which he tried to calm his panicking senses, he opened the cold-water tap and let the water run. Cupping his hands, he formed a bowl and splashed the water in it on his face. That felt good; that was exactly what he needed right now. In the distance he heard a door open and close. Looking down at the sink's drain all the while, he drank a bit, splashed some more water against his face and then just leaned onto the sink again, lost in quiet, confused thought. All he did was mechanical, without emotion – a soulless robot bending to the will of a thorny master deep inside him; one that drove him mad with silent pain.

He looked up from the drain and into the mirror. His thoughts, that up until then had rioted and argued the way English MP's do during council of the House of Commons, went quiet instantly. Stunned, his muscles tense and his body paralyzed, he stared into the mirror with eyes wide open in freaked-out surprise. In the mirror he had identified the mirror-imaged contours of a man, standing right behind him: the Hispanic that had flirted with Bella.

_What the…_

But he wasn't able to finish that thought when in a flash the Hispanic removed his shirt, exposing a sight that, upon laying his eyes on it, hurt Jacob so much that he didn't know whether to run in tears or drop down on his knees, waiting for the next command to be inserted. In the mirror, he saw a heaving chest, muscled, perfectly triangular, and abs that, in their breath-stopping smoothness, hit him like a bus hits a cat crossing the street; all that remained of his powers of reasoning was a blood-splattered road. Every thought he had up until that point, every thought that tried to make sense of the events, that protested _fiercely_ against all that had been unfolding in the past ten minutes – that hoped that the mirror was a TV screen, and not _actually_ a mirror – was instantly evaporated, disintegrated, crushed, pulverized and blown out of the window when his mortal eyes focused on that body. Reasoning had lost it from primitive, animalistic tendencies that even Jacob could not describe, and aroused his wolf-like manhood, that cheered over its victory.

It cheered even _harder_ when the Hispanic man suddenly grabbed Jacob at his thighs. His hands were soft and warm, sending waves of shock and awe through Jacob's body, consuming, _burning_ even the tiniest of neurons throughout his body in a conflagration of orgasmic pleasure that made him go limp as his heart pounded in his head like a drum. Abruptly, the stranger turned Jacob around and before he knew it he heard a _click_ that sounded like a prison door slamming shut. He found himself in one of the restroom's toilet stalls: now, one of them _was_ taken.

"My name is… _Paul_," he said, softly and sensually.

Jacob's throat was squashed out of unnerved excitement, and thus what he had intended to be a reply was no more than a gasp. His hands still at Jacob's thighs, he roughly slammed Jacob's lower body against the wall, coming ever closer until their hips touched, his eyes rolling all over Jacob, vaguely smiling as if he was eyeing a nice steak. With unexpected tenderness, he gripped the top of Jacob's head, which pounded feverishly with terrified curiosity. He gently stroked his hair, following it to the back of the neck, all the while staring at Jacob's half-open mouth, then piercing his eyes like a Bushman's spear impales an antelope, then looking back at Jacob's mouth, focusing intently on those flushed, red lips. The dark-haired stud clenched his fist, grasping the back of Jacob's neck tightly and pressed their faces together. Jacob closed his eyes dreamily as the muscly stranger kissed Jacob in a way Bella had never done, causing Jacob's whole world to topple over when he tasted the stranger whose tongue was energetically and playfully _inside him_ – and it was the best thing he had _ever _tasted. Instantly hooked to the taste of men, his arms came back to life, embracing the stranger's warm back, strongly and without conviction. Abruptly and unexpectedly, Jacob felt the strength of the man when, pressing his left arm _hard_ against Jacob's chest, he now pinned Jacob's upper back to the back wall of the stall, producing a moderate "thump" as the rest of Jacob's excited, sweating body smashed into the wall – and much to his ever mounting confusion, Jacob loved_ every second_ of being dominated like this. Meanwhile the Hispanic hunk's equally muscly right arm had slowly moved from Jacob's neck all the way down to his right hip, going ever more central, until…

_"Oohh_"moaned Jacob_, _as it was the only thing Jacob could utter when an almost divine rush of pure ecstasy enveloped his loins, expanded to his stomach, his chest and finally gripped his shoulders and neck. Every last one of the small hairs that grew there rose out of downright joy, exploding in a powerful sensation that made him whimper softly and had his pants bulge with tense, primitive excitement. The guy was a predator, and Jacob was his prey – Prey that was being drowned in the bitter acid of confused delight; thrown into the muck of agonizing hesitance as the thorn in his inner core wriggled itself ever closer to its destination.

Out of that acid, out of that muck, arose rebellious, urgently panicky thoughts: _What is going on? Why am I enjoy–_

But these thoughts were abruptly terminated when a new hit of thrilling, heart-racing _bliss_ grasped and held his loins tightly, making him groan and whimper while the smoothly-muscled hunk stroked him through the fabric of his jeans. He swiftly unzipped them, and pulled them and his underwear down with impressive ease and speed. Tenderly yet forcefully, the guy started stroking, _pumping_ and massaging Jacob with his right arm, his left hand now grasping Jacob's head and pulling it backwards, making Jacob moan and whine with frustrated joy. His brain was hurting, _throbbing_ in unison with that other part of his body which he could not do but _hate_ for betraying him like this. It was _blackmailing_ him with promises of endless pleasure, as the level of delight mounted and his source of glee grew bigger and harder until it was _hurting_ and his body jerked and convulsed with the ever more powerful waves of ecstatic satisfaction assaulting it, like the waves of the Channel hitting the cliffs of Normandy.

Jacob thought his brain was going to explode with tense anticipation, when the left hand had let go, and the pumping grew weaker. Jacob started coming to his senses slowly, as a growing intensity of light met his eyes through closed eyelids. The dark shadow of the tanned Hispanic's face had seemingly faded. When Jacob felt one hand suddenly appear on his belly and another one on his ass, gripping it and massaging it, paired with a new shot of excited terror rushing through his loins when the Hispanic beauty took Jacob's inner animal into his mouth. Jacob moaned, like a steam locomotive whistling when it lets off steam, arching his back with tensed-up muscles that hadn't felt so energized in _years_. Jacob immediately responded to the sensual touching by grasping the beautiful head, moving it slowly back and forth. He claimed the perfectly shaped head's hairs as his own when he clenched his fists so _hard_ that a gratified whimper escaped from it, the filled mouth smiling and the eyes dancing with intimate pleasure.

Tension intensified and excitement surged as Jacob's inner animal took full control, ripping apart the very last of his protesting thoughts, asserting its dominance over his lover by aggressive movement; mechanically, without thinking. It just felt so_ good!_

Joy soared rapidly to its climax, and all Jacob could think was _oh god_, rocking inside the guy's mouth back and forth with increasing speed. The words in his mind transformed into moans filled with the delicious bliss of the moment and the agonized despair cried out by those that do against their strongest will, when suddenly he felt as if he was pulled through an aircraft's engine, run over by a high-speed train and hit by a bus: in the distance, he heard the panicky chattering of Bella. As if yanked out of a dream, he came to his senses and suddenly realized what had been happening the past twenty minutes. Utterly shocked he threw the guy away from him, his animal self driven back to its dark lair, howling loudly. The stranger landed, somewhat painfully, against the other wall, stuttering something unintelligible. Jacob hastily put on his underwear and his pants; an action that was met with _stiff_ resistance as plummeting levels of joy got swiftly replaced with mounting levels of shame, exasperation and gasping tiredness. He clicked open the lock and slammed open the door of the stall and rushed out, leaving a confused man behind.

"Where the hell have you been!" a terrified Bella exclaimed. Jacob looked at her withj a crazed expression of grief. "I want to go – _now_", was his short and rude rebuttal.

He hurriedly got out of the bar and found himself in the middle of a true shower – it was raining cats and dogs outside. He didn't care. He wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible. His exasperated soul was on the verge of breaking; the cracks in his heart grew bigger. His head was pounding and he felt sick. Enraged, surprised, tired, confused, elated, aggravated, irritated – Jacob didn't know what to feel and what to do. Sleep seemed like the best option. In the meantime, Bella was standing next to him, sobbing. She started ranting, calling him names; she said she didn't know him anymore, that it couldn't go on like this and similar things. Jacob didn't want to hear it and started walking in the direction of their hostel. He'd love to go home, but he couldn't. He was stuck in this place. Stuck in this place with a woman who wouldn't _want to understand_, even if he tried explaining her. But what was there to say? _Hey Rose, a guy sucked me off this evening – and I liked it! Want something to drink?_ Like that was going to work. Instead, both of them walked onward, silently, in the pouring rain, back to the hostel.

When they arrived there, Jacob immediately went to the bathroom, unzipped his fly in quiet despair and, stroking himself, the Hispanic in mind, manually finished the job that was started in the bar. He moaned softly as he reached that moment of faked perfection – gold-painted, plastic trombones reach the harsh climax that is inherent to their solo – for which his body had so desperately yearned, cursing the encounter with this tanned god of sexual desire.

Minutes later, they sat on their bed, in the quiet hostel room. Jacob stared out of the window, into the cold, unforgiving night, lost in his own train of thought. Bella stared at Jacob; the guy she loved but had stopped understanding. She was petrified. Suddenly, Jacob looked at her and she noticed his eyes were red and his lips were trembling. Instantly she forgot her annoyed anxiety, which was replaced with pity. She moved over to him, held him, and tried to comfort him. _If only she knew_, Jacob thought. _If only she knew_.

* * *

**A/N:** I would appreciate a (short) review to hear your thoughts!


	2. Part 2: A Sinking Ship

**_ Unleashing the Animal_**

* * *

**_Part 2_**

**_A Sinking Ship_**

* * *

**6.**

After that night in May the rest of the vacation was awkward. They still enjoyed their time together in Sweden, but it was a lot less spontaneous and uncomplicated than either of the two had hoped. The worst was that Jacob knew how Bella must have been feeling, but he didn't dare to tell her anything. Was he scared of her leaving him, or was he scared of admitting what he might be – what he _is_? Did he still even care for Bella in the way he always used to?

He wasn't sure, but he knew he wouldn't take any action until he was more certain of his situation. The night at the bar had irrevocably changed him, and it caused him to question one of his most basic certainties: his sexual orientation. Truth be told, that process had already started way back, after that fateful party back in March, but it wasn't until now that he was ready to _think_ about the fact that he be different from others, even if the actual term itself made him wince every time he heard or thought it. Once the conspicuous, three-letter word had appeared in his thoughts though, it stuck in there like a shark smelling blood: it was about to find its prey and tear it apart.

Halfway May they had arrived back home, and tensions had risen between Jacob and Bella. For the coming three weeks, they saw each other less and less, let alone have sex. In the meantime, Jacob spent time on his internship, half ignoring the whole subject, half thinking it over. Of his friends, there was only one guy with whom he dared talk about it: a guy by the name of Seth Clearwater. Jacob still fondly remembered how they had initially met. It was a funny story: they had been in the same secondary and middle school, and were now enrolled in the same university too. Effectively, they had been bumping into each for the past fifteen years. Still, it took a chance encounter in a supermarket, in both their second year of university, for them to notice each other. Seth was going through a break-up, and Jacob was bored; his parents were abroad at the time and he was feeling a bit lonely. And so they met up for movies one weird, Monday night. They had connected and bonded instantly, and over the course of months had grown to become extremely close friends.

What Jacob loved about Seth was his uplifting, cheery demeanour, for starters. Furthermore, it was obvious Seth had no prejudice, and was even very much interested in what Jacob had to tell about his recent experiences. By all means, Seth was an interested figure, always willing to lend a listening ear. And so Jacob threw out this confusing cocktail of despair, exasperation and agony at this himself rather good-looking guy. They sat in Seth's cosy student apartment. Two big ornate windows offered a view over the narrow street on which the house stood

"I'm so…" Jacob started, but couldn't finish, prompting Seth to complete the sentence:

"…gay?" With that, Jacob's Sweden-story had ended.

"Yeah", Jacob replied, annoyed at his inability to pronounce the word.

When others said it he always winced, or twitched slightly. When he attempted to say it himself, he always found himself choking when the word entered his larynx; as if he tried to get out a piece of wood that had positioned itself transversally in his throat instead of longitudinally, the edges painfully hooked behind his vocal chords. The more he tried to get it out, the more splinters broke off, damaging not only his convulsing oesophagus, but also aiding the spiky intruder in his heart in its mission to penetrate the core of his mental stability and well-being. It was a core that was already so scarred in the battles of the last months that all but the last line of defence had been torn down and reduced to rubble; rubble, turned into dust by the expanding forces of a bitter enemy. Dust that was now quietly swept away from a desolate battlefield by the calming wind of the seductive sleep of depression that tired and weakened his defences ever more.

What Jacob failed to see all this time, however, was that the brilliant citadel that guarded his mental well-being was not only assaulted from the outside. Its soldiers, who so stubbornly attempted to fend off the enemy army that marched closer to the front gate of his sanity every day, quietly fell by the hand of something else but the outside enemy: dark, primitive forces that came out of the very depths of Jacob's own being, were at work inside those gates. They were stealthily killing off the guards that so far had kept the dreaded infection from enveloping and ripping apart Jacob's unwavering soul; like a river chipping away its banks, but not without the rain providing the river with the volumes of water needed to do so.

What could he do? His enthralled appreciation of the masculine beauty of well-developed yet smoothly curved abs had hit him in the face like a brick flying through a window, shattering many of the last fragments of conscious resistance that had _dared_ to remain standing. This had given his inner wolf ample time to take control, shutting down any force of reason that he had inside of him. This flow of events unnerved him greatly, messing him up internally, making him wonder whether he was really _that_ easy to get. But what messed him up even more was that he knew that he had somehow loved what had happened in that dingy toilet stall.

The way the stranger – _Paul_ – had jerked with submissive pleasure at Jacob's three hands, taking absolute control over him, had made his veins rush with the tense excitement of a wild animal pursuing its prey; claws sink into soft, deliciously young flesh and teeth sharp as razorblades tear it apart with infuriating delight. And it wasn't even _this_ feeling that formed the greatest source for Jacob's quiet resentment of himself – it was the fact that he subconsciously _knew_ he didn't want _that_ time to be the _last_ time.

His admiration of and love for the male physique was _not_ a one-off, as he had consistently hoped for in the days and nights that he had stroked himself in urgent despair, trying to push away and forget that evening in the bar. No, this was something bigger, something chronic, _systemic_. An infection had spread throughout his body; it had surfed on the waves of soaring exhilaration when that tense feeling of animalistic lust had rushed through his veins, during that animal-like pursuit in the woods of a dirty toilet stall in Sweden. And the worst part of it all? Jacob had _let_ it spread, seemingly all too eager to let the inner wolf dictate how he felt, what he felt, and when he felt it.

Jacob gazed out of the window of Seth's flat. He felt almost intoxicated by this increasingly bittersweet cocktail of feelings: on the one hand yearnings for masculine strength to hold him the way a woman _could simply not do_; on the other hand a growing embarrassment, resentment for and of himself, and deepening shame.

"And what about Bella?" Seth suddenly asked. The question had come out of nowhere, or so it felt for Jacob. That much was he hooked on those _other_ questions that had arisen in the past few weeks, so that he had completely forgotten about the fact that he was still in – what many other people perceived as – a loving relationship; one between a boy and a girl. Jacob sighed.

"How many weeks has it been since you returned from Sweden?" Seth continued. Jacob had a short think.

"Today is the 9th of June, right?" His dark-haired friend with the tanned skin nodded. "So… it must be a bit over three weeks, I guess".

"And she has no idea about all of this?"

Jacob looked at his feet in annoyed shame. "She knows something is up. But no, she doesn't know _this_ is the problem. That the problem is entirely _me_, not her – however cliché that sounds."

Seth sniggered, but stopped abruptly when his eyes met the look on Jacob's face. "I'm sorry" Seth quickly added, and looked down at the floor submissively, obviously now uncomfortable with that small outburst of uncontrolled enjoyment. Jacob grinned, as his friend reminded him of a beaten dog, tail between its legs. Feeling a little sorry for him, Jacob reassured him by a pat on the shoulder and stating that it's okay, that he needn't worry about it and he himself probably ought to be a bit less emotional about it all; take a bit of distance. It was just so hard _not_ to be emotional about it.

This inner hesitation had obviously penetrated the faint smile and stuttery "Don't worry about it" that he had uttered to his friend, because now _he_ was looking at Jacob with a new-found resolution in his eyes that unnerved Jacob. Made him feel small, and feeble.

"It's obvious you are not great at this 'tough guy' façade, are you?" Seth sarcastically retorted.

Now it was Jacob that evaded Seth's piercing gaze, visibly ill at ease and in conflict with himself. Seth's observation was not entirely true, though. Like a sick animal, Jacob was quite good in hiding stress – it just didn't work with people that knew him very well, Seth being one of them. The latter leaned forward now, forcing Jacob to look him in the eyes. Somewhat shyly, Jacob looked back. "What should I do?" Jacob asked, his voice trembling slightly.

"First, I'm curious," Seth answered. "If I may ask, were you ever in love with Bella?"

It was a fair question that Jacob hadn't thought about yet. He had to dig deep to get the answer, which by itself was a rather good indication of what the answer would be.

"Judging by the long silence, I'm assuming the answer is no. How come that you ever got into a relationship with her, then?" Seth questioned.

Jacob smirked and put his hands on the table, folding them over each other and resting his head on them with his chin as he spoke.

"It was rather easy. I guess everybody had a girlfriend, or at least everybody was busy _getting_ a girlfriend, except for me. Plus I wanted to have sex – get it over with, you know? And then I saw Bella. Meek as a lamb; she was up for the taking. Sounds harsh when I say it like that, doesn't it?"

Seth grinned vaguely, but Jacob detected an amount of shock on his face. Nevertheless, he kept talking.

"So yeah, I just went for it. She looked nice enough, and I was obviously _getting her_, so to speak. And so it happened. Part of me wanted to love her, and I think there were some days that I might have. In the end though, I just didn't. And now we're almost 9 months together. It's always easy to judge in retrospect." Jacob smiled vaguely, but on his face one could easily read the kind of exasperation that was so typical of somebody who is getting fed up with his predicament. He paused for a moment in which he resettled on his chair, crossing his legs the feminine way, his arms hanging loosely beside the chair's hind legs. Seth remained silent, watching Jacob intently, waiting for him to continue.

"Kind of screwed up, isn't it? The situation I mean."

Seth nodded in agreement. "Yeah, yes it is. Who would have thought, hm?"

Both of them now sat silent, gazing outside first, then looking at each other uncomfortably, finally evading each other's gazes altogether. As Jacob intently focused on the floor, Seth returned his attention to the conversation. "You're messed up, you know that?"

It was one thing for Jacob to think it himself all the time, but it was something different to hear it from somebody else. His heart stung from the knife Seth had abruptly stuck in there. Slightly shocked by the sudden honesty, Jacob looked at Seth while turning increasingly pale the longer he looked at him.

Seth was right: he _was_ messed up. This on-going internal conflict made it very hard to think without some kind of battle cry from his heart interrupting his thoughts. He was basically operating in a state of perpetual confusion, and it could not last much longer. He would crash and burn soon.

Jacob had turned rather pale by now, and an aura of sadness hung around him, so thick, that one could almost touch it. His voice trembling, Jacob finally got out a few words. "So, what… what should I do?"

Seth frowned. It was obvious he was going to say something that would be difficult for Jacob to hear.

"You want my honest opinion," Seth questioned. Jacob nodded.

"I think you should tell Bella. Not only because it's fair that she knows why you have shut yourself off from her, but also because I think this whole Bella situation is causing you unnecessary stress. Do both of you a favour: free yourself _and_ her, and get out of this gilded cage."

What could Jacob say? Seth was obviously right. The relationship had ended by now, but still; the process of letting a known state of being go was always hard. To Jacob it felt like letting go of Bella would be like lifting the anchor. With her gone, there was nothing that would keep him from drifting off onto sea, and into the storm. The crooked ship of his confidence was going to get blasted by pouring rain and winds that no doubt would tear off the sails and crack the masts. This ship was going to sink out there, and he knew it.

_But perhaps it is for the best_, Jacob thought.

"Whatever you do, though", Seth continued, "whatever you do, you can call me. You're going through a rough period; that much is obvious. While I will probably never fully understand what you feel, know that I will try." Seth smiled as he spoke, even getting a bit emotional in the process.

Jacob mouthed "thank you", as he was unable to get any sound out of him, his throat squashed by feelings of hurt and panic on the one hand, and feelings of brotherly love on the other hand.

That night, Jacob went home feeling better. It had been good talking about his problems with somebody. Finally he could breath a little; let some of the poisoned air out, and breath in new, clean air. It rinsed his body and empowered him with a new vitality that he had lacked for a long time. Things seemed a bit clearer now. After the initial shock from hearing Seth call him gay for the first time, hearing him speak the simple, uncomplicated truth, he was now confronted head-on with reality. It had felt good, even if it disturbed him greatly. It's one thing to _think_ about something; it's something completely different to hear it out loud. Hearing it out loud, especially after having had the thoughts churning inside you for months, driving you to near insanity, carries with it the fact that _you are not the only one_. Others out there believe the same thing, and if talked about rationally, without judging, this reassurance carries with it another very important facet: acceptance. Even though while thinking this he was again quickly reverting to his previous state of confusion, there was at least one thing he knew for sure: he had to break up with Bella. It terrified him to no end, but it was obvious he had to do it and the sooner the better. It was as Seth had said: he owed it both to himself and to Bella. By telling her, he was to face the truth, and she would be freed from the shackles of this god-forsaken relationship. Jacob was the key holder, and it was time he got into action.

* * *

**7.**

Jacob woke up to the chirping of birds. It was the 4th of July, and it was getting really hot; he was sweating as he lay in his bed, even though he had kicked most of the blankets off him during the night. Outside the sun was already shining. By all means, it seemed like it would be a beautiful day. Jacob got out of bed, went to the window and pulled open the curtain, his stomach clenched. That feeling you get when you suddenly realize that you had to do something you absolutely dread to do; that was the feeling Jacob had, as he stood there, looking at how people hastily got into their cars or on their bikes to drive off to work. His thoughts drifting, he felt the weight of sleep pressing him down onto his bed. He would have probably fallen asleep again, if the thought of his internship hadn't awoken him right away, kicked him out of bed and into the shower. Half an hour later he was outside, on his bike, cycling to university.

Today was not going to be a normal internship day, however. As he got ever closer to his destination, he kept thinking about what he was going to do and more importantly, _how_ he was going to do it. He had never really said anything quite like this. How _do_ you say something like it? While these thoughts were churning inside his head, eating away at his confidence and resolve, the biology department got into view. And right in front of the entrance, was Bella. She had agreed to meet up with him there, on this beautiful morning in July. And he was going to ruin everything.

He put away his bike, and tried to look confident as he walked towards Bella. The act seemed to work; he smiled, and she smiled back, though not with that sparkle in her eyes she used to have.

"Heya", Jacob greeted her, trying to seem happy and cheery.

"Hey", she responded, sounding like an asthmatic that had just had a coughing fit.

They nervously avoided each other's gazes, both of them looking to a different side of the university's grounds, uncomfortable shuffling about on the pavement, glancing to each other as they turned their heads, until finally Jacob found the guts to ask whether she wanted to take a walk.

As they walked down the ramp that lead up to the biology department's glass entrance, it was as if she knew full well what was going to happen. You could see it written all over her. Her posture was slumped and tired, almost like a gazelle afraid of being hunted down and eaten by a lion that is stalking her from the wild, African bush. Her face was gloomy. They turned around the corner, merrily greeted by the warmth of the sun.

"The weather is really nice these days, isn't it?" Jacob said. Bella hardly responded, just nodding absent-mindedly.

Eventually she did turn her head, giving him a vague smile, but she quickly focused her attention on her feet again. Jacob watched her as they walked around another corner. She seemed so tiny, so vulnerable. He felt sorry for her. It was as Seth had said: he had to cut her loose. And so, he imagined himself taking an axe.

"So how have you been, Bells?" Jacob asked, only half interested in the answer. He didn't want to rush into the more emotional part of the conversation head on heels. Bella hardly even looked at him as she uttered something that sounded like "okay, I guess."

They stood in silence for a few minutes when Bella turned her head and looked at Jacob. Her eyes were wet, but no tear had rolled down any of her two soft cheeks. Jacob felt a strong urge to grab her, but he didn't. He continued to stare into those pools that were Bella's eyes. They glimmered in the warm light of the sun, but whatever it was those eyes radiated, it was nothing close to the warm, welcoming radiance of the sun. What he saw in those turbulent pools of water was almost a cry of despair – a shocked helplessness that sensed an axe hanging over a neck: the axe he had taken to arms and was going to drop on her shortly. It was just uncertain exactly when, where, how and _why_ it would fall.

It was the last of this series of questions that she had wondered about for weeks, and she had asked about it so many times that she had lost count. Never did Jacob say anything about it, and even if he did, the answer was barely enlightening. Maybe she should have pressed harder? Force him to speak his mind? The reason she had never done it, was because she was always afraid of losing Jacob. He had been her first in many things, and she didn't want to let go. And now, after all that time worrying, she would still lose him. The irony killed her. While Jacob was imagining taking up the axe to arms, swinging it over his shoulder to deal the blow that would sever their connection and set Jacob's ship to sea, Bella imagined the axe coming down on her neck, separating her head from the rest of her body in a grotesque spectacle of blood and gore. Then the words started flowing out of Jacob's mouth.

"I realize our relationship has not been the best lately…."

_Yes, there it comes_, Bella thought. She remained still though, accepting the hurt the words caused on impact as they were thrown at her, as if she was being stoned for saying _you-know-who's_ name.

"…and I realize this was a very hard period for you," Jacob continued. Bella bit her lower lip in anxious anticipation of the words that would mark the end.

"…but I feel we might not fit together as well as both of us would ultimately have liked."

As the words kept coming, Bella bit her lip with increasing strength so that she would end up breaking skin if Jacob hadn't suddenly grasped her hands in silence. Surprised, she let her lip loose, a tear rolling down her left cheek. Her mouth was arid, and she had trouble swallowing the few drops of saliva that had forced themselves outside their glands and into the desert-like cavity that was her mouth. She finally couldn't take it anymore and fell into Jacob's arms, crying softly. Jacob sighed as he wrapped his arms around her back and tried to comfort her, rocking gently back and forth. Her body convulsed with the sadness that had overtaken her and forced tears of grief to roll over her cheeks, wetting Jacob's T-shirt. So they stood for a while, the sun parching their skin, on the windswept square that lay behind the biology department.

Finally Bella loosened her embrace of Jacob. Slowly, she backed out of him and looked him in the eyes, her arms loosely wrapped around his back. A slight surprise overtook her, through all of the gloom that filled her heart, when she noticed Jacob's back was unusually hard. For a moment she looked at his chest and his arms, and noticed that they were more voluminous than before.

_What the… Has he been working out_, she quietly thought to herself.

She moved her hands up Jacob's back to feel the well-defined Latissimus dorsi muscles of his back, which gave Jacob's torso a more triangular look. Taking her right arm of his back, she let it travel to his right shoulder, looking at it intently, and came to the conclusion that Jacob's deltoids had also grown.

_But… he never cared for muscles. What is happening to him?_

At that point she looked at Jacob's face, and she saw a vague smile of amusement had appeared on it while she had been checking out his muscles.

"Have you been working out?" she asked, her voice still frail and tiny due to her sobbing of a few minutes ago. Jacob nodded slowly, and responded audibly with a soft "yes".

Bella was confused with the situation. Here they were, in the middle of breaking up, and she was paying attention to muscles. She yanked herself out of Jacob's grip, and stared at him, bewilderment overtaking her face. The pools that were her eyes suddenly darkened, like when a boat stirs the soil and causes mud and clay to fill the water, making it black and brown.

"What is happening with you, Jake!" she cried out. "I don't even know you anymore. How did we come to this point! I remember, back in March; you were so happy about going to Sweden. We had planned the trip and everything was going to be great. But ever since those nights in Stockholm you changed… Why, Jacob? _Why_…"

Bella was in a state of confused anger. Thoughts milled around in her head the way a steam train's running gear keeps the locomotive moving; metal bars move around forwards and backwards in a system that is both puzzling yet completely organized, resulting in motion of the locomotive in one direction. Similarly, Bella's head was filled with thoughts that went in all directions but all helped her to come to one conclusion; and then, everything fell into place:

_Something had happened in Stockholm, in that bar, right under my nose, and I didn't notice it…._

She was trembling over all of her body when that weight fell on her shoulders. A black mist occluded her sight for a moment and she grasped her forehead as she, in dizzied shock, repositioned her left foot in order not to fall over.

When Jacob saw that, his first thought was that Bella was going to faint. He launched forward to grab her left arm. She was already okay, though, and managed to evade Jacob's gripping hands by taking another step back. Jacob was taken aback by her sudden evasion of his action, and came to an abrupt halt, standing still and staring at Bella with a surprised look on his face.

Jacob seemed to be in a state of shock, unable to speak or move. He then slightly lowered his head, so that his gaze evaded Bella's face and tracked her body until he was staring at roughly her feet.

_What is he doing now_, Bella thought. _Maybe I shouldn't have snapped at him like that_.

She did nothing however; kept waiting for Jacob to say something, or _do_ something at the very least. But nothing happened. He remained silent, and all they heard was the wind in the trees and cars in the distance. A swallow flew overhead, chirping merrily, no doubt embracing the warm rays of the sun.

Even with these calm and reassuring murmurs of nature around them, Bella and Jacob were in their own bubble; one in which the silence was absolutely deafening. Bella was focused on Jacob, and Jacob was focused on, what looked like, the pavement. He had clenched his fists and he had drooped his head completely. She did not see his face anymore, looking at his short, dark hairs instead, which were gleaming in the warm, summer sun.

Finally, he looked up at Bella again. She could see that he was evidently in a state of shock, battling to keep his emotions from overflowing. He took a few paces in her direction and started to speak.

"Bella… You have a right to know. You absolutely do. But, I can't. I'm not ready to say it out loud yet. The words choke me and leave me without air so that I die, turning blue. But you do need to know that –" Jacob briefly choked up before he managed to recollect himself and continue: "that something did happen in that bar. It did not start at the bar; it had started already back in March. What happened at the bar in Stockholm would probably have happened at some point. Maybe not in that way or at that moment, but it would have happened."

Bella couldn't bear it any longer and blurted out: "But _what_ happened there then! What could have possibly been _so_ awful that you can't even speak about it?"

Jacob was silent again for a moment before continuing. "I… it's difficult. I'm not _really_ the person you _think_ I am. I am different. How different is still hard for me to say, but one thing I do know: I'm not the guy for you and you are not the _person_ for me."

Bella was surprised when Jacob talked about a 'person' instead of a 'girl', when he obviously was talking about her. She frowned, gazing at Jacob's eyes, and finally she remembered a detail: when they were at that bar in Sweden, a man – the man that had flirted with _her_ – had also entered the restroom, just after Jacob had gone in. Her thoughts picked up speed as she went through all of that vacation, trying to think of any more peculiarities with _persons_. Like Formula 1 cars racing towards the finish, so where Bella's thoughts, until the one last remaining thought crossed the finish line:

_Oh god… is he gay?_

The conscious formulation of that sentence had altered the expression on her face somewhat. Jacob noticed her mouth fall half-open as surprise filled her eyes. Her face showed a mix of understanding, surprise and genuine shock while she realized that the situation was hopeless for her; she had lost the guy she loved. But at least she knew it wasn't her fault. No, this was something that was entirely out of her influence. As disarming as such a thought would normally be, so calming was that thought to her, even in the face of losing her love.

After a short while, Bella returned back to the present, and instantly wiped the unconsciously formed expression of shock off her face, to replace it with a frown, staring up at Jacob's eyes. She slowly walked towards him, and wrapped her left hand around his back, while gently stroking his head and neck with her right hand. As she stroked him, her gaze trailed her hand's movements, still frowning. Finally she sighed and stared down at her feet, before lookeding back at Jacob.

"You are gay, aren't you?" Jacob was shocked when she said that.

_How did she figure _that_ out?_

It had taken him over twenty-two years, and with those few hints he gave her she had fit the pieces correctly within ten minutes. He was astounded by her quick-thinking, so much so even that he couldn't keep a smile of proudness slip. The corners of his mouth curled and elongated the lips for just a split second. He quickly regained control and re-endorsed his expression of pained guilt that she knew what had driven them apart. On the other hand, he was happy he didn't have to explain anything himself. "How did you know?"

Bella's answer was straightforward: "Following on from what you said and me remembering how that rather flirtatious, Hispanic-looking guy – "remember him?" Jacob smirked and answered: "how could I forget!" – went to the restroom just after you, made me think. Suddenly it occurred to me he might not have been flirting with _me_; it would sure as hell explain why you were in such a trance when I tried to point out his flirting to you. You reacted in such a confused way, even though I had the impression you had already been staring at him for ten minutes and therefor simply _could not_ have missed his flirting; still you had no idea what I was talking about. It almost seemed like I had yanked you out of some dream. And strangest of all: after I had pointed it out to you, you actually looked _relieved_. Never would I have thought that a guy would _like_ other men flirting with his girlfriend! At the time I didn't think much of it all. Now I wish I would have…. Then again, a girlfriend doesn't tend to go by the assumption her boyfriend might be gay."

She sniggered at that thought, shortly and quietly, but soon enough she was frowning again in pained thought as she trailed with her hand along Jacob's neck, stroking him gently, her gaze focused on his chest.

"Bella…" Jacob whispered. She looked at him in quiet anticipation. "Bella, I… You are taking this so well. How is that possible?"

At that moment it finally registered with Bella: her boyfriend is _gay_; No, her _ex_-boyfriend is gay. She had been so involved the past few minutes in coming up with more observations of Jacob's gayness that she had completely forgotten about the only thing that mattered: that she and Jacob had broken up a few second ago. The axe had fallen, cutting comfortably through the captive's neck, severing the head's connection with the body; death was instantaneous. What made it worse: she had helped Jacob; had helped in letting the axe fall by speaking the problem out loud instead of forcing _him_ to do it. She had done the dirty work. She went quiet and her frown deteriorated into an expression of misery as new tears appeared and she slammed her body into Jacob, groping him tightly as her body jerked with newfound emotions raging through her mind. And Jacob, he cried softly also. His ship had set sail. The last ropes that held it at the shore had been cut, and he was slowly floating out of the safe harbour onto an unknown ocean. An ocean that was cold, dark and huge.

* * *

**8.**

The rest of the month of July Jacob spent doing his internship, which was now almost over. Even if physically he seemed to cope perfectly fine with the situation – he laughed with friends, went out to parties and seemed to enjoy himself well enough – his mental instability had increased ten-fold. One alteration in his behaviour was a distinct symptom of this process: Jacob had started drinking more. The spiky master inside him caused him grief that only alcohol seemed to cure, even if it was only temporary; like a patient who continually asks for more morphine to be administered. He doesn't care whether his body will be damaged by the high doses of the medicine, so long as the pain goes away. And thus at least every weekend Jacob would be in a state of intoxicated pleasure, as reality was pushed far away from him. However, it wouldn't have been the power of alcohol if not for the strong rebound effect Jacob would always suffer from the next morning. It was as if his problems were tied to him with an elastic chord: every time Jacob pushed it away from him, it would return and slam him in the face as hard as he had shoved it off, and the harder he rammed it away from him, the harder it crashed back into him.

Jacob did not notice the downward spiral he was in. Every crash was like a hammer falling down onto the thorny intruder, jolting it another precious millimetre into Jacob's sanity. In turn, Jacob would feel a sudden pang in his heart, another reminder of his misery, which made him wish for another intoxicating rush so that he could forget his hellish predicament. This went on for at least four weeks. In that time, Jacob drilled himself his own grave, and lay comfortably in it, not knowing what he was doing or why he was doing it. He got so obsessed with the pain and suffering that at some point he wasn't even sure whether he suffered because he _knew _and _understood_ that he was different, or whether he was simply _addicted_ to the misery. Jacob didn't even stop to ask himself those questions. Round and round he went, until finally he hit a wall. His final crash was about to happen and it would hit him in the face with a bang that would serve his memory for years to come.

It was August and slowly by slowly summer was subsiding. The nights were getting longer, and the days were getting shorter. Some trees started to shyly shed their leaves in expectation of September, as the first of migrating birds gathered in swarms and left the country, choosing a somewhat warmer place to stay at during winter. Life at university had come to an end this academic year, and students enjoyed their vacations. His friends were going all over the place: some stayed in the country, going camping or renting a house; others went far and wide to countries unknown to Jacob – countries that, admittedly, Jacob wasn't really interested in getting to know anyway. As for Jacob, he had a vacation planned together with Seth, which was to be in about a week. Today though, he would be going with some friends to a party. Not that he really cared for it… It would be fun and he would see some friends of his. They would talk, laugh and drink. And that he did. Constantly. It was no surprise that the morning after was rough, to say the least.

The next day he awoke with a pained expression. His head was throbbing and he had a hard time remembering what had happened the night before. As a result, he drew the conclusion that the night had been really fun – which was a silly conclusion. The last few weeks Jacob usually woke up like this after parties, and only about 10 per cent of the parties had been any good, let alone been really fun. He got out of bed and worked though his normal morning ritual: made coffee, started his computer, checked Facebook, read the newspaper, took a shower, shaved and went back to his computer. It occurred to him that he was going with Seth on vacation soon; it might be prudent to check his accounts, just to see if there was enough money in the bank.

There wasn't.

Panic lunged out of the computer screen and held Jacob's heart in a strong grasp, one that Jacob tried to shake off, being the rational, self-contained guy he always tried to be. Searching the account, re-checking all the numbers, looking at all the sums of money that had been going in and out, he was flabbergasted to realize that he had been on an uncontrolled spending spree that had left him with insufficient funds for his trip that was due in a week. Whereas panic had previously just held Jacob at his jeart, it now had a firm fist clenched around his throat, choking Jacob with anxiety. The next few seconds saw that fist duplicate. And duplicate again, and again, and again, until clenched fists held Jacob's entire body. Stunned, Jacob looked at his computer's screen while a veil of angst covered his eyes and occluded his judgement.

This was the final hammerfall: at long last, the black thorn that had dominated his mental life the past few months had reached the core of his emotional machinery, causing it to grind to a halt, squeaking and fuming like a steam locomotive coming to a screeching halt after somebody had needlessly pulled the emergency brake. His heart broke under the weight of his problems; the foreign invaders had finally overrun the citadel; the ship of his confidence and stability was sinking and the plank that had held all the books that were placed on it finally cracked and broke with the placement of one final tomb. From the shadows, the wolf had lurked; now it came out, howling triumphantly.

In a spur, total panic enveloping his every thought, Jacob ran down and jumped on his bike. Within fifteen minutes he stood in the living room of his parents, who had just woken up and were enjoying a cup of coffee while reading the newspaper on this pleasant, Saturday morning. Even if his parents were surprised to see him this early in the morning, especially after a party, they were nonetheless pleased he was with them again. His mother was worried of course, immediately inquiring if anything was wrong – because why else would their son come to them if not because something was utterly screwed up? While usually he comforted his mother by saying that everything was okay, this time she was actually right. His acute problem: how was he going to say that _he_ was the one that was screwed up?

Tchaikovsky's sixth symphony was on the radio. They were about halfway the first movement when he opened his mouth, ready to start speaking. His mouth was like a desert, and so instead of talking he nervously coughed, pointed at the kitchen while coughing with increasing force, one fist held in front of his mouth. He went for a glass of water, gulped it down as if it was the only thing that could save him, and returned to the living room. Now he was ready.

"Mom, dad; I have a problem."

Tchaikovsky's sixth had reached the second part of the first movement, introduced by a loud bang as the strings leaped into their agitated motifs. His mother looked at him more worriedly than she had done in months, and even his father looked somewhat concerned.

_Can't stop now, I already started. Just stay calm, and it will be okay_.

"First, I need you to stay quiet while I'm talking. This will be a long story, one that might hurt you and during which you will want to interrupt me, tell me that I'm incorrect and more such things. But I beg you, please, for the love of god,_ do not do that_."

His parents looked at each other, then back at Jacob. They nodded; his mother said "okay" with a nervous, feeble voice. She seemed to be ready for the worst news possible, like that he was kicked out of university, that the police had arrested him or that he was beaten up by somebody. Jacob looked at his parents in silence once more.

_This is it_.

So he began to talk. He told them about his accounting issue. He linked that issue to his drinking, and this he linked to his unhappiness the past half year. At that news Jacob could tell his mother was dying to comment. The expression on her face switched between blank, disturbed, pained and worried. His father showed a smaller range of expressions, but nevertheless it was clear that he was as worried as his mother was. Meanwhile, Jacob continued. He told them about Embry – the guy at the orchestra with which he (Jacob so assumed) had fallen in love. He told them about the vacation in Sweden: how it did not go according to plan, even if he didn't tell them about the "incident at the bar", as he liked to refer to it. He didn't dare call it by its name just yet.

Last but not least, he talked about Bella and their break-up. At that, it finally became too much for his mother. "_Why?_" she exclaimed out of nervous agony. She had blurted it out before she knew it. Jacob threw her a pained expression, but it was a rather handy hook for the continuation of his story.

"Because…"

Jacob looked at both his parents, the insecurity and concern dripping of his face in such volumes that you'd be inclined to place a bucket under him.

"Before I say it, I need to hear you say two things. I need to hear that I am your son and you will always love me, whatever happens." His voice faltered as emotions clung to his throat, quenching the vibrating movements of his vocal chords. His mother almost broke out in tears, and his father was getting equally emotional, but kept rigid control over them. Jacob himself was no less affected by this display, and found it hard not to let his tears flow. He clenched his fists tightly as he waited for the answer; waited for _his_ axe to fall.

"Jacob," his mother started. "Jake, I don't know what it is you did that could possibly be worse than what you just told us now, but I promise you, we still love you. You are our son. We will love you, always, whatever happens."

His mother was now on the verge of crying as she spoke those words, her voice weak and trembling with sorrow. She sat at the edge of the couch, looking up at Jacob with an anxious gaze of bewilderment. Jacob's voice shuddered and his hands shook as a tear escaped his right eye, rolled down his cheek and fell down to the floor. It left a wet stain on the carpet.

"Mom, dad; I think I might be," Jacon began, but paused briefly to calm his sensitized senses. His arms trembled as he closed his eyes for a minute, drooping his head slightly. He had carefully avoided this word or let other people pronounce it for him. Not today: today, he was going to do it himself. It was still stuck in his larynx like a piece of wood. With all the force he had inside him, he pushed against it; the harder he tried, the more splinters broke off, but he wasn't going to give up. Finally, the wood snapped and a final shot of splinters hurt his oesophagus as the two pieces flew up into his mouth, ready to be ejected out of his body. Jacob looked up, opened his eyes, pierced his parents' gazes and finally spoke the words he had tried to utter for weeks:

"I am gay."

Tchaikosvky's sixth had launched into the trombone's climatic solo. Even though the music had reached its peak of depression, the moment those words had parted his lips Jacob felt a heavy weight being lifted off his chest. The load on his mind was getting easier now and he could breeze somewhat more freely for the first time in weeks. His parents were dumbstruck and looked at him in silence, surprised trepidation on their faces.

Jacob wasn't sure what to do. He was terrified his parents would reject him. This wasn't very uncommon – he had heard all sorts of stories, which all caused him to have the nightmares he had frequently had when thinking about his coming-out.

It took them a minute to process the statement, however short it was. Finally, his father erected his upper body, but still remained seated. Resting his hands on his knees, leaning heavily on them with his body, he looked up at Jacob worriedly.

"How do you know? I mean, you're still young. Are you sure this isn't some kind of phase? After all, you had a girlfriend for such a long time."

Jacob shook his head in annoyance. He expected these questions and statements, but now that they had been asked, he still found them annoying. "No, this is not a phase."

Now his mother interrupted him. She was not pleased with this development, even though she tried to remain calm. The expression on her face, however, betrayed her discontent. "So what about Bella then?" She frowned, disappointment leaking from eyes.

Jacob just stared blankly at his mother before answering. How was he going to introduce the fact that something had already happened by which he knew?

"Mom; men are different. I can _feel_ it. I can _feel_ how I yearn for a strong man's embrace. I find them attractive in a way I have _never_ found a woman attractive. When a cute couple passes me on the street, I look at the man; I _check him out_. The woman is merely an afterthought. That is not _normal_, is it?"

His parents looked briefly at each other. The smiles they had when he had stormed in that morning had eroded. It was silent in the living room, save for the sweet sixth symphony of Tchaikovsky, still droning on in the background.

"Isn't that simply a thing in which you size yourself up against other men?" his father then suggested.

That was a legitimate thought, one that Jacob hadn't prepared for. That's of course how it often worked in nature: young men size each other up, inspecting growth, muscle mass and strength, to see who would be the winner if they were to fight. Such inspections would minimize damage done to you by avoiding fights that you were obviously going to lose. It had been the most fundamental expression of mating conflicts ever since such things came into existence, when male and female first lay down _together_ in bounding love. Jacob knew this wasn't true for his case, though. He wasn't interested in another man's body for _that_ reason. He had to go carefully about this, though. His parents were on edge right now; his mother certainly was. His father seemed abnormally composed.

Jacob sighed as he scratched the back of his neck and swallowed some saliva that had accumulated in the back of his throat while he was deliberating on what he was going to answer. It tasted stale; his breath wasn't any better, making him feel a bit dirty. He ahd forgotten to brush his teeth that morning….

"No, that is not the case. When I look at a man it's not because I want to size him up. I imagine doing things with him. Doing things _to_ him – and _him_ doing things to _me_."

Jacob had wanted to say more. As he spoke, his eyebrows frowning but his mouth smiling, expressing that special kind of bliss that only _he_ understood, he vividly remembered the guy from the Swedish bar. His flexing muscles, the yearning moaning and his tender strength, as he fulfilled needs Jacob had not even known he had before that night. The answer tensed up his mother, who had one more observation to put forward.

"But you always seemed so _masculine_."

That was indeed true. Hardly anything of Jacob's normal behaviour could make somebody suspect that he was gay. His answer was short and simple:

"Not everybody who is _gay_ is a _poof_, and not everybody who is a _poof_ is _gay_, mom."

His father heaved a deep sigh, seemingly content with the answers. He looked at his wife as he stood up, after which he fixed his gaze back on Jacob. He smiled vaguely. His mother also stood up, first looking at her husband, then looking back at her son, who was now expecting the worst. As he looked at both his parents, who stood in front of him menacingly, he pictured how his father drew out an axe. He would heave it high above his head, and let it drop on Jake's head with crushing force. And finally, he would be no more.

The worst didn't come.

Together his parents walked over to Jacob, slowly but with a welcoming calmness. In the background Tschaikovsky's sixth had reached the calm epilogue of expectation. Carefully they closed in on him. Then they hugged him; hugged him in a way that made Jacob weak. Shocked by the sudden love he was getting, he let out a sigh and started crying out of sheer relief. His body, exasperated with all the emotions that had bottled up, not being able to find a vent for half a year, instead ricocheting from his belly's walls continuously for so long, shuddered as it was finally releasing all the toxic waste that had accumulated inside. _Finally_, for the first time in months, his mind and body got the chance to open up to the world once again. The parental love felt like a warm summer sun shining brightly on Jacob's soul, defrosting it and allowing it to move and express itself once more. The thorn that had sternly pierced Jacob's core, that had made his internal logic grind to a halt, was softly and smoothly pushed out again, inch by inch, as his mental processes received the freedom they needed to function normally. It felt great; like when he was six years old and had fallen from his bike. His parents would calmly pick him up from the street, dragging him to the sidewalk, and they would comfort him, gently stroking his hairs. And so they stood like that – Jacob hugging his parents, and his parents hugging Jacob – for at least ten minutes. It felt liberating to finally say what he was and his parents seeming acceptance of the fact reinforced him, made him feel stronger.

Arguably, this day had been one of the most difficult days in Jacob's life, and he would remember and treasure it for years to come. With the secret out and his parents seemingly accepting it at first sight, he started to recuperate, but his mother was quick to remind him of the fact that he was still screwed up and that he ought to deal with himself. She offered to help, and so did his father. Jacob didn't care. He would do anything at this point; so depraved, famished, _hungry_ was he for the parental love he had needed so desperately over the past few months and was getting only now due to his own stubbornness. He thought he could remain in control, that he could deal with the problems himself just by thinking about them. Admittedly, this was a strategy that had always worked for him, but now he knew his brain was just another mortal organ: his reasoning had weaknesses. It cost him loads of energy, it could get distracted, and if it were to get in a malfunctioning state because of the occluding powers of emotions and the disorientating influence of alcohol, his mental stability could be easily compromised; like a fold-up chair that closes instantly when a fat kid sits on it the wrong way. These lessons learned, Jacob was ready to begin anew. The rest of August was thus spent on repairing the damage he had dealt to himself. His parents helped him with the few Euros he missed for the trip with Seth, and together they went.

They spent a week in what Jacob thought was one of the overall greatest cities he had been in: Budapest. Once the capital of a great empire, then enslaved by a neighbouring empire and finally beaten into submission by the other forces of Europe, Budapest had a strong mix of charm, culture and beauty. Everything in that city felt _okay_, and Seth was quick to agree. Every day, they walked to the beautiful market hall, where they bought a baguette (even though it looked fake) and delicious Hungarian salami. Their little plastic bag with food in their hands, they walked over to the Danube, and sitting at its shore in the warm sun, they ate their sandwiches, their faces ripe with bliss. This was life. The week continued in much the same vain. They strolled around town, went to see museums and monuments, and occasionally just went to lie in the park and read a book.

On one of the last days, they decided to go a rather well known open-air discotheque. This party place was located quite far to the south of the centre; fortunately there was a night tram that stopped just on the other side of the road to the venue. It was interesting to see how they constructed it. It was located inside a looping road that brought one onto one of the many bridges that span the width of the Danube. There were two such loops on the Pest side of the river, and in both of them there was an open-air discotheque. Seth and Jacob had a good time, dancing, drinking and flirting around, and while the overall memories of the evening would remain vague, there was one thing that Jacob remembered: the physique of one of the most beautiful males he had ever seen in his life. He couldn't have been older than Jacob; he probably was even a bit younger. His shoes were grey, and fit his pants admirably well. He walked around in long, heavily faded jeans, so that they were almost completely white. The boy had small hips, making him look lean as Jacob's gaze was drawn to his ass. On top of that stood a back, beautifully triangular, which muscles that were toned and, most importantly, in proportion. His skin was tanned. As he grabbed for his phone to answer a call, his flexing biceps attracted Jacob's gaze with unusual speed, gripping it and not letting it loose until Jacob saw the impressive shoulders.

Finally, he turned around. Jacob was nearly swept of his feet when he saw a powerful, non-hairy chest, with abs below it that were distinct yet subtle in their smooth appearance. It was only when he turned around slightly, so that the light of the lamp posts shone on them from the side, that one could really value the depth of those abs. The boy turned back to face Jacob, checking the area around him as if he was looking for something. Those blue eyes, shooting from one corner to the other, were set in a cute, slightly oval face. A small, cute chin formed the summit of a deliciously masculine lower jaw; exactly what Jacob liked! His hairs shone in the light of the lamp posts, as they passively rocked from one side to the other as he kept rotating his head, still looking for whatever it was he was searching for, still holding the phone up to his right ear with that formidable yet smoothly muscular right arm. This guy had an absolutely perfectly proportioned body. In his boyish beauty and innocence, he was even more beautiful than the stunning Hispanic from Denmark. He wore his pants teasingly low, so that his underwear (Björn Borg, no less) peaked out playfully. As Jacob stared at that well-defined body, a smile of happiness on his face, his imagination started working. Those flirtatiously low pants had caught Jacob and had made him hot.

_If only I could get in there._

That was Jacob's only thought as he stood and admired the boy, very much tempted to just go for it and _give it to him_.

Right then, the boy waved to somebody to the left of Jacob. Some girls came running past him, and kept running until they flung themselves in the boy's open arms. He kissed one of the girls passionately as she put her right hand on his ass and her left hand on his lower back. Jacob cringed as he saw the three of them finally walking back into the dancing crowd, his arms around his girl, laughing and kissing all the way until they were out of sight. Jacob sighed. He still had to get used to being gay, but at least he now permitted himself to actively enjoy boys he found attractive.

As the night progressed, he saw the boy a couple more times, always with that girl wrapped around his shoulder. Every time he saw them, he found himself being jealous of her. Every time, he found himself wishing he wasn't gay, so that he needn't be tortured this way.

Right then, he had enough of it; enough of staring without being able to touch.

_Damn it. I'm gonna get one for myself!_

With that thought in mind, two days later, Jacob flew back home. A decision had been made.

* * *

**9.**

The last ripples of the emotional upheaval he had experienced two weeks ago rolled out over the lake that was his sanity. A new dawn had broken. A few weeks ago, every ripple had the potential to create a wave, which could evolve into a tsunami that would have torn down anything in the vicinity of the lake's shores. Now, the ripples were harmless, and the vacation with Seth had proven a lifesaver. Not only had the calm of being abroad with a good friend, in one of his favourite cities, refuelled Jacob emotionally as he discussed everything with Seth in the course of the week; the encounter with that boy at the party had made him _realize_ that he was gay and that he had to get over that. It's not like it was going to change. It was easier to simply _embrace_ the fact than battle it constantly. And so he would do. The wolf had won. How he was going to do it though, he didn't know.

One thing he did know was that he liked watching men. Whether they were live, breathing specimens in front of him or mere images; that he didn't care about. As long as they were beautiful, muscly and their upper body was naked, you knew Jacob would be happy. Via that route, Jacob had also come into contact with a popular series of movies called Dawnbreak: a story about a girl and her relationships with two guys: one shifter, one vampire. To be specific, Jacob got introduced to the saga by a video he had seen on YouTube. A parody, no less! A parody that gave him a hint to what was going on in the movies, even if what was said in the parody made zero sense to Jacob. The only thing he really cared about was the end of the movie, in which a guy exclaimed: "Emmett, keep your shirt on!" At that point, another guy immediately tore off his shirt while shouting "_No!_" The guy was stunning. Intense muscles flexed as he had pulled that shirt over his head and walked away, annoyed at the request. You could see his perfectly triangular shape, his expressive pectorals dancing in the light of the sun, the two playful nipples standing out in an otherwise pale ocean.

The next set of thoughts went forward like a rollercoaster. For, if the guy in the movie that played Emmett was as beautiful as the guy in the parody, combined with the fact that apparently this guy walked around half-naked _so_ often that people asked him to keep his shirt on, Jacob would be in heaven. Using Google, he nervously typed the name of the saga, pressed enter, and got presented with the usual list of links. The first link was a Wikipedia page; exactly what Jacob needed to quickly find out if he was right to have hope. Within seconds Jacob had found the actor that played Emmett, the werewolf: Kellan Lutz. A young boy, only 21 years old when the last of the saga's films got released, according to the page. From the photos on the Wikipedia page, he sure looked nice. His jaw was amazing: so masculine, with a beautifully broad chin. His eyes were a soft, tantalizing blue, set under brown eyebrows, and his hair looked intriguingly similar to that of the Swedish Hispanic. It was styled nicely, like brown waves. Sure, the face looked hot: it was exactly the mix of boyish smoothness and adult masculinity that Jacob, frankly, _adored_. The next test would not be his face, but his upper body.

Again, Google to the rescue, but this time the image category was of use. Jacob carefully copied over the actor's name into the Google search bar, pressed enter, and was presented with a set of photographs that made Jacob gasp in astonishment. Lutz was _beautiful_. A huge chest with bulging pectorals; expressive abs in which centre a happy trail runs down into pants like a river flowing down a valley into a cave; steel guns of arms and shoulders so broad that their strength could only be Herculean.

Admittedly, it wasn't the _best_ that Jacob had seen: Lutz did lack a certain set of proportions that made his chest look excitingly large compared to the rest of his body. Thus, first place was still firmly held by the delectably toned boy in Budapest. Still, Lutz had his own unique style that Jacob wouldn't mind getting to know at all – penetrate his core, so to speak; see what made Lutz _tick_.

Within days, Jacob had managed to get all the movies from a download-savvy friend of his. He began to watch them, starting with the first movie, though he knew in what category this placed him. He had been told that The Dawnbreak Saga was somewhat of a chick-flick, and he now understood why: the most redeeming quality of the movies was the physiques of the male actors. The plot in the movie was okay, and the acting wasn't the best he had ever seen. The environments were quite nice, though, and all in all, the movie was okay. Even though he knew this before he started watching it, he was still mildly disappointed to see Lutz appear in only two, rather measly scenes. Somewhere at the beginning and somewhere at the end, the young wolf appeared together with his father. Sadly, in both appearances he wore a wig so that he had long hair, and he wore a _shirt_. Apparently, it was in the second movie that Lutz was to bust out his abs, or so he had heard.

Curious, Jacob went on Google once more, Wikipedia being the first stop. This proved to be an enlightening read: the boy had to get some muscle within a year, otherwise the part would go to a more "mature" (read: _shredded_) actor. The logic proved fair enough:you can't have a werewolf without any trace of muscle in his human form, right? And so Kellan went to work. At the end of the year, he had gained 15kg of raw muscle and had lost some fat in the process. All that for _Twilight: New Moon_, the second movie in the saga. As Jacob kept reading the Wikipedia page, he hadn't noticed how a grin that spread from ear to ear had appeared on his face, a lusty tongue licking his arid lips. Yeah, _Twilight: New Moon_ was going to be _great_.

That same night Jacob sat down to watch _Twilight: New Moon_. He pressed the spacebar on his computer's keyboard, and as the film started to roll on the screen, he made himself comfortable on his bed. Already early on it was clear that there was at least one thing that one couldn't take away from this movie: the quality of the music. The introductory theme that played as Jacob gazed at the appearance of a full moon, the name of the movie – _Twilight: New Moon_ – fading in on the foreground, was hauntingly beautiful. As Jacob watched and heard the music unfold, he smiled, even as feelings of saddened enjoyment clenched his lungs so that when he tried to hum along with the music, all he did was whimper and sob pathetically. Even when a few tears rolled down his cheeks, hopelessly trying to lower the corners of his mouth, he still kept smiling out of true, pure joy; a passionate joy that runs deep down into one's heart and makes one feel truly alive as emotions of sadness and magnificent bliss, mixed-up into a confusing though delicious cocktail, envelop the brain – that much did he enjoy the exquisite, haunting brilliance of the music that advanced on him from the computer's speakers. Sensitive and mysterious, the strings, escorted by the all-enveloping tone of the French horn, spread out over the orchestra like a warm, cuddly blanket, introducing you to the eerie imagery that was on-screen.

_Alexander Desplat truly _is_ a great composer_, Jacob thought, as the movie proper started and Jacob dabbed the last of the tears on his cheeks with a paper tissue.

After that beautiful introduction, the movie's quality sadly regressed. This was in part due to the actress that played the part of the female protagonist, whom Jacob simply didn't really like. Fortunately, the movie took a turn for the better early on: her greatest love decided that he had to go, leaving the stage completely open for Lutz to do his thing. It was however lamentable that it took a while for Jacob to finally appear, and when he did, he still had that horrible wig. To Jacob's pleased surprise, he was introduced with someone shouting "_Hey, biceps!_" as a reference to his rigorous workout routine that past year.

_I could have helped him work out,_ Jacob thought._ It would have been just as intense, but a lot more fun. Granted, he wouldn't have gotten so ripped, but he _would_ have gotten more flexible_. Jacob sniggered at that thought, while the movie slowly unfolded.

It wasn't until much later that Lutz came into the picture somewhat permanently. He was repairing motorcycles together with the girl, and finally they got to test them out. Of course the girl crashed upon first riding on one. Smiling vaguely, Jacob cursed her for being the stupid girl that she was.

At that point, Jacob was about to be dumbstruck as Lutz raced on his own cycle towards her, kneeled at her side, and suddenly removed his shirt with amazing ease and speed. Uncovered were a magnificent set of muscles. For a moment, Jacob's breath was taken away from him as his eyes widened and his pupils dilated, electrified by the breath-stopping beauty of something that was so deliciously primitive and animalistic – the ultimate expression of male strength and dominance. It took Jacob a few seconds to come too, at which point he leaped for the computer's keyboard, pressed the spacebar, and rolled the movie back a minute to watch that scene again. That he did at least three more times, until he finally realized _it was going to get better_: half of the movie revolved around Lutz wanting to claim the girl as his own, and Jacob knew sure as hell Lutz would appear several more times; dressed, half-naked, maybe even _naked_ – Jacob really didn't care, as long as Lutz was in the scene. In this movie there was now _at least_ one wolf that was howling to the moon: Jacob's inner wolf, beaten into its hiding place only a few weeks ago, had charged out of its lair in pursuit of a musky scent that would ultimately lead him to husky bliss. Growling dangerously, it looked around, eyeing the trees in the forest for any sudden movements, ready to tackle its prey and sink its claws and teeth into young flesh.

Jacob pressed the spacebar once more and was guided through that astonishing scene one final time, after which he let the movie run its course. It was also here that he realized how hopelessly gay he must be. He was rolling a movie back five times, just to watch the muscled body of an actor. He couldn't help himself, though. He was spellbound by the beauty of those muscles; utterly mesmerized by their flexing movements as they worked and made Lutz sweat, so that he gleamed in the light, like a wet rock in the sun – but Lutz was oh so more _sensual_. Jacob's heart was melting out of watching such hotness. Of course he knew he wouldn't be watching The Dawnbreak Saga because of the great story, but he was a little shocked at how physical – how uncomplicatedly _visceral_ – his preferences were. Saying his taste had an air of primitive simplicity was saying it nicely. He shrugged that thought off, intent on enjoying the movie without getting concerned about how people might think that he were shallow, or '_dick-driven_', as one guy he had talked with some time before had semi-seriously put it. Jacob was _not_ dick-driven. Not entirely, anyway.

By the time the movie had ended, Jacob's jaw had reached the floor and he realized there were only two types of people that were going to like The Dawnbreak Saga: teenage girls and gays. The time he had just spent looking at one of the greatest half-naked guys he had seen up until now had felt somewhat similar to an intoxicating rush, so that he didn't know whether he was drinking again or whether beautiful people always felt so good. Needless to say, Jacob watched the other movies over the following days, increasingly happier with Lutz's looks. Each subsequent movie had come out a year after the previous one, and it showed: Lutz got consistently older and thus more mature with every release, and Jacob liked that. In the final part Lutz actually seemed like something of a grown man. His pose, his looks and his behaviour had altered for the better. For that reason, that movie would end up being his favourite of the entire cycle, and he would watch it multiple times in the coming weeks. Even if Lutz didn't walk around half naked most of the time in those movies, that didn't really matter. In a way, Jacob realized he liked Lutz just as much with all his clothes on. The face was a mix of cuteness and masculinity; the perfect fit to the body he had. Plus, his clothes were, admittedly, really hot. And so, every time Lutz appeared in a scene – half naked or fully dressed – Jacob would look and see _sex_ written all over him. Instant hotness.

Jacob's obsession with Lutz didn't stay with the movies, however. What captivated Jacob in addition to the physique of the actor was the speed with which he had gotten said physique. "Google is your friend", is what people always had told Jacob when he was being too lazy to look something up himself, but that saying had stayed with him. And indeed, also on this particular occasion, Google proved to be Jacob's friend when it had found a link to a body building blog by the name of _Project Swole_. No idea what 'Swole' was, of course, but on it Jacob found a workout routine entitled "Werewolf training for muscle gain". Apparently there had been a guy that was as interested in Lutz's workout routine as Jacob. Can't say he was surprised; many people had probably looked at Lutz and had been staggered by the quick pace with which he had gotten 'shredded'. Fortunately, this 'Swole' guy had done pretty much all the research and had come up with a routine that would hopefully get Jacob fit relatively quickly.

So Jacob started changing his diet and lifestyle. He decided to eat healthier, and so he did, focusing on lots of protein, reducing carbohydrate intake and fat, as per the recommendations of various people he had talked to or read blogs of. By that method, his excess fat would be turned into muscle, hopefully. He decided to get more physical exercise and get more muscles – _á la_ Lutz – and so he went to the gym. In the end, you'd find him 6 days a week there, with Sunday being a day 'off'. Whether he was going to keep this up in combination with studies he didn't know. Frankly he didn't want to think too much about it; he'd see how it would go, and if it didn't work out so well, he'd simply change his daily routines to better accommodate everything.

After about two weeks, Jacob looked in the mirror and was surprised to see something had changed. His shoulders looked more voluminous than before.

_Could it really happen that quickly?_

Tensing and relaxing his shoulder's muscles, he poked them to probe their hardness. Also his abs seemed more developed. Smooth grooves were appearing; the start of a six-pack had actually begun! Proud and happy, he went to his parents for dinner that evening. Fact is he didn't have to say a word about it. When he removed his striped sweater, the first thing his mother mentioned was the added volume of his shoulders and biceps. Here was one person that was obviously not pleased.

"Jacob, you're going to be a body builder! Please don't, I really don't like that look," she pleaded with a sorry face. Jacob glanced at his father, grinning, and he grinned back as he had briefly looked up while making a cup of tea and cutting himself a slice of cheese.

"Don't worry, mom. I will not be a body builder, but I do want to look better than I did before. You just concentrate on my _mental_ and _intellectual_ achievements, and disregard any physical ones, okay?"

His mother was still not happy about the idea, but she let it slide. _For now,_ Jacob predicted._ She is going to go on about this for at least a few weeks_. It didn't bother Jacob in the slightest though. He had already gotten past that phase in which he cared about everything his parents told him and had learned to make decisions for himself. If anything, he quite enjoyed his mother's resistance on this front. He saw it as an acknowledgement of the fact that he _was_ getting more muscly, and he loved that idea.

The weeks went by much in the same fashion. In the meantime he had found a good balance with exercising and studies, even if he had to get up much earlier than before: at 7 AM he would get out of bed, shower, eat, drink his obligatory cup of coffee (all part of the morning ritual), and go to the gym. He'd arrive there around 8 AM, exercise until about 9 AM, then go to the lab to continue his experiments. It felt great. He used to come into work like a zombie, still half asleep. He now felt more energized, more concentrated and fitter.

This new lifestyle of a healthy diet and exercise had been a good thing and much to his surprise, Jacob didn't really long for any of the "old foods", such as crisps, nuts, beer, wine, etc.. It all belonged to a time with which he couldn't be bothered anymore. He did take a cookie now and then. One with hardly any fat, of course. Of course this created some problems here and there. Going to a bar, having drinks with friends or a party weren't quite the same, since he wasn't getting drunk anymore. He hadn't had a hangover for a very long time. Some people called him a party pooper, but Jacob stuck to his principles, knowing how easy it was for him to regress to old patterns of behaviour. And throughout all this, his muscle mass was increasing.

A new dawn was breaking for Jacob. Feeling more confident, healthier and fitter than before, he felt ready to stop dreaming and start acting.

Time to meet some guys.

* * *

**A/N:** I would appreciate a (short) review to hear your thoughts!


	3. Part 3: Unleashing the Animal

**_ Unleashing the Animal_**

* * *

**_Part 3_**

**_Unleashing the Animal_**

* * *

**10.**

In the weeks of September, Jacob had been adhering to his workout routine and meal plan, much to his own surprise. He thought he would have given up after two weeks. Much to his own satisfaction though, not only did he follow it all without much trouble, he actually _enjoyed _following it. What's more, he even liked monitoring his body fat percentage and weight. He loved the cooking, too, and he loved eating food of which he _knew_ what was in it and how it had been prepared. In the process he had even come up with some tasty recipes for tuna and chicken salads that he not only loved to make, but enjoyed eating even more.

By all means, the banishment of processed foods and ridiculous amounts of fat had served him well. As a result, by the time it was October, he had visibly become more muscular, even if he wasn't nearly where he wanted to be yet. He'd have to continue with the meal plans and the workouts as per his plans for at least two more cycles to get in the vicinity of the result that he hoped for.

Just as a friendly reminder, he had hung up a photograph of Kellan Lutz in his role of the werewolf, from The Dawnbreak Saga. One in which he was half-naked, so that every wonderful muscle in that delicious torso was exposed. Jacob saw it when he woke up, when he had a lunch and when he sat down for dinner.

_That_ _body_ _is the reason I'm doing this workout, _he tended to think. Of course there were other reasons, such as the desire to have a healthier "body and mind", although that still sounded to him as new age crap. Really, it was the desire to have a more filled-up shirt that kept Jacob going. He himself found it beautiful, but he suspected that his type of guy would appreciate it also.

Now, it was time to let his Budapest decision come to fruition: he was going to find himself a guy. Not for something serious though; he wasn't at all up for that. Right now it felt like he was in second phase of puberty. He basically wanted to fool around and have fun, the only condition being that the guys looked good. As always though, things were not quite so straightforward as Jacob initially thought, much of the complexity coming from his own feelings and thoughts, which rocked from one extreme to another like a ship in a storm. _His_ ship, which, even though earlier it seemed that it would get irrevocably lost at sea, eventually had faired all right and was still afloat, battered and broken, navigating the oceans of his mind with a stormy, excited happiness.

But where does one start to look for other gay men? Websites seemed like the easiest route, but Jacob was never quite a fan of such media. He wanted to speak to the people in person, so that he could read their faces and poll their intonation as they spoke. In his hometown there were a few gay bars, but he didn't really have anybody to go there with, so that he ended up not doing anything at all. One evening he sat at his desk, staring into the void that was his blue computer desktop, and he sighed.

_I will have to go to these websites. It's the easiest place for a newcomer like me…._

Nervously he entered the URL of one website he knew, and pressed enter. Immediately he was presented with pinkness. Jacob made a face at that: pink was one of his most hated colours. Still, he pressed on as he bravely clicked the "register" button, and started filling out the required form to get himself into the community.

After about an hour, he still wasn't done yet. Not because the form was overly long, but because he wanted to pick just the right username. His usual one didn't really suffice: he wanted something that gave a hint as to who he was without disclosing anything. And of course every time he came up with a witty pun, it had already been taken. Like _Homo sapiens_: there were at least five people with that name or something similar. At some point he considered _Homo erectus_, but that just seemed a bit too 'in your face'. In the end, deprived of any good idea, he decided to go for a combination of initials and birth year, like so many had done before him. He wasn't satisfied, still thinking _Homo sapiens_ would have been the best, but what could he do…. At least he had a profile – which now had to be filled with additional data.

The stuff one could fill in was of a class Jacob didn't quite expect. If anything was 'dick-driven', it had to be this website. Not so much because one could choose _sizes_, but it came pretty close. There even was a category "hairiness", besides quite generic categories like "age" and "length". Jacob elected to fill in most of the blanks, but kept some things to himself. He rounded it off with several carefully selected pictures that were also available on his Facebook profile. That way he wouldn't be putting up any new stuff on the Internet. After about two hours of clicking, typing and nervous hesitation, he had completed and finished his profile. It was amazing the website hadn't returned a time-out error, so long had it taken him to complete the final steps of the registration process.

The next day, he had a host of views and several messages. Sadly, none of them were particularly beautiful, but he was quite generous in giving people a chance. And so he struck up conversations. Of these however, there was only one guy that was sufficiently interesting. The guy was from a nearby town, his parents originally being from Venezuela. Truth be told, the conversation wasn't _that_ interesting. It was okay-ish, and after a few rounds of sending messages, a date was set to meet up.

They had agreed that the guy would come over to Jacob's for supper and some drinks. And that's what happened: the evening had started off a bit hesitantly, and Jacob hadn't felt quite at home with this quite obvious poof sitting next to him. But, as the bottle of wine got emptier, their lust was filled up. When finally they found themselves cuddling each other on Jacob's small balcony, the kissing had started. A few minutes later, they were in bed, hugging, kissing and touching each other all over the place.

Not much more had happened that night, though. Jacob had broken it off, seemingly not content with the guy, the guy's moves and, quite frankly, the guy's _size_. He had felt bad for him; he basically rejected him for something he couldn't remedy. Determined yet in doubt, for Jacob was happy not to have done anything with this kid, he felt bad for being so 'physical' in his demands. But then again, this date was just about the physical, so he didn't feel like he could be blamed for anything either….

When the guy had left, Jacob sat on his bed in his quiet apartment, staring at the empty bottle of wine and the dirty dishes. This had been his first true contact with another man. It wasn't a disappointment; not at all! It was the first time he _honestly_ wanted to do something with another person. And not just for his own gain – to relieve himself and such – but also because he wanted the _other_ party to enjoy it.

This whole concept had been quite unfamiliar to him. Only now did he realize that sex with Bella had been something completely different. It had always been about _him_, even when he had said to her that _she_ should be enjoying it too. She had smiled at him, and said something like "thank you", genuinely surprised that this was the way it ought to be. It had never crossed her mind, apparently. And still, immediately afterwards, Jacob had still focused on one thing: his own desires. The wolf always wanted to end on top. At least, with Bella it did….

As he sat on the bed and realized that, he felt bad for her. Her memory was fading quickly but still lingered in his mind after those months. The speed with which he was forgetting her was quite astounding. That in itself made Jacob feel bad. They had been together 9 months, and judging from his reaction, it would seem Jacob didn't care very much that it hadn't worked out in the end. On the other hand, considering that he is gay and probably didn't ever love her in earnest, how could one even expect otherwise. Even so, it felt like betrayal. When two people part after such a long time, it should hurt, right? Sure, hurt it did, but only for a few days. After that, the hurt subsided quickly, and within two weeks he was pretty much himself again. It seemed selfish to him, but it also didn't seem like he could honestly do something about it. The episode had come and gone; all he could so was turn off the TV and go to bed, quiet the thoughts in his mind, close his eyes and let the misty veil of sleep cloud his tired eyes. And so he did. Fifteen minutes later he was asleep.

The next few days he couldn't let the thought of Bella loose, though. After that particular night with that guy, and feeling those seemingly new emotions of sexual involvement in another person, he wanted to see Bella again, just to know how she faired. She had talked about not continuing studies because she didn't know what she wanted to do anyway. Instead, she'd do nothing. Work, she said she would do, at the hotel she had been working for a few years already. It seemed like a very honest yet naïve plan. On the other hand, at least she wasn't spending heaps of money doing something she anyway didn't enjoy. Earning some money instead seemed like the better option, even if it was cooking vegetables in a hotel, a job that, admittedly, paid lousily.

That same day, Jacob contacted Bella on Facebook, and received a message after only a few minutes. They shared a quick status update over Facebook chat before Jacob finally suggested they meet up. Bella was happy to, and they decided to meet that weekend, at a local bar.

They sat in the bar, talking, for several hours, discussing all that had happened since their break-up. The reunion was a happy one: no resentment, anger or sadness filled the air. Both had accepted what had happened and were leading their life the way it came to them. Jacob was surprised to see that Bella didn't even wince at his gay adventures. If anything, she showed a genuine interest that Jacob had not expected in the least. Most people would feel noticeably uncomfortable. They would look away from Jacob, or at the very least would have this kind of seemingly neutral yet wholly displeased expression on their face. Not Bella. All in all, she reacted very well. Perhaps, even though it seemed strange in a way, she was relieved that the relationship ended because of Jacob being gay. At least it wasn't her fault. It was doomed to end one way or another, and they had enjoyed a good run as long as it lasted. That's what Jacob imagined, anyway. He hadn't dared ask Bella about it and she didn't volunteer any information. She seemed calm and at rest, which was what Jacob found the most important.

With that, the last of his straight life had seemingly ended. A chat in a bar and a luke-warm goodbye with the last thing that bound him to the 'old ways'; that was it. After seeing her off he went home, calm and content.

* * *

**11.**

"You've been on how many dates now?"

Seth curiously leaned his head to one side, sitting on his soft, red couch, a milky sun shining through his apartment's windows, a cocky grin on his face. Jacob gazed blankly at him while busy counting in his head, trying to remember the guys.

"Well, not more than three, I guess." Jacob recounted and then nodded, as if to give his approval of the calculation.

"And with how many did you have sex?" That question wasn't hard to answer.

"Two. Sounds like a small number, doesn't it? Still, compared to the period before I came out, it's quite a lot, given the time span."

Seth frowned. "So you fucked almost all the guys you were on a date with?"

A bit ashamed with the conclusion, Jacob ducked Seth's prying eyes. Instead, he quietly looked out the window. It had been mostly cloudy with a touch of sunshine that day, but right now it was yet again drizzling.

_Miserable weather_, Jacob thought to himself, shifting his focus, glancing back at Seth with only his eyes. Seth was fiddling with one of the chords of his hoody.

It was now end of November. He had been going out for roughly two months. The time had been great; he couldn't recall feeling so free in a long time. The past year had been quite crazy, so full of conflict and emotional upheaval that it seemed like ages ago since he had simply sat down.

And yet. He couldn't ignore the fact that he was not a hundred percent happy. The feeling was quite paradoxical and admittedly annoyed Jacob, but it kept stinging him like a splinter under a nail.

Jacob looked up from his ruminations and glanced at Seth. He seemed conflicted, one thought after the other making an appearance on his troubled face, but he was unable to speak any of them. Finally though, he mustered some courage.

"It's been a few months now since you came out. Can I ask… how do you feel about all that happened? Do you regret being gay at all?"

Jacob smirked. If the question had been phrased differently, it would have been as outrageous as it was understandable. All too often, people assumed that being gay was a choice. This kind of question usually reflected that notion. The question, as phrased by Seth, was not like that though.

Did he regret being gay? Funnily enough, that was precisely the question he had been asking himself for the past two weeks. As he thought his answer over, he recalled two dreams he had had in particular. In one he was a gymnastics teacher; or at least, he was a normal student, but fulfilled that function part-time at his university's sports centre. At the end of one class, his boss walked over to him, and told him bluntly: "I'm afraid we can't have you as a teacher anymore, because you're gay." Jacob recalled how, in the dream, he just stared at his boss blankly. After a few moments, he had walked away, feeling utterly humiliated, angry and depressed. In that same dream something like it had already occurred, though in that particular case, he had almost beaten the perpetrator to death. While he had felt the urge to do the same to his boss, he didn't. No idea why; it probably didn't seem like the best thing to do.

The other dream took everything a step further. Although 'being gay' had never really entered the dream, he knew it was intricately linked to that fact. In this dream, he had voluntarily signed up at a mental institution. 'So he could talk things over with professionals'. He remembered waking up from that dream, stricken with horror and dread; pretty much the way he had woken up from the other dream. But it was true: he had thought of going to a psychologist on several occasions. He never did it because he always ended up wondering what he should be talking about. There wasn't a lot to say….

Jacob sighed. "Do I regret being gay?" He looked down at the floor as the memories of those dreams poured back into his consciousness, making him tremble with a sudden fear. He gazed back up, at Seth. "Difficult question".

That answer took Seth off guard, so much was evident. He was probably expecting a resounding "no". His face opened up with an expression of surprise, his eyes widening and his mouth falling open ever so slightly. "Oh?" he reacted.

Jacob nodded slowly, thinking his next words over, choosing them carefully. "Yes." He frowned and leaned over quietly.

"Let's face it: being gay is difficult in this world. In our country it's relatively simple, but there's still too many countries where gays are sent to prison for life. And from what I understand, while the west is opening up to gays, the east and south are closing down all the time. Russia is putting in law after law that make it impossible for gays to live a normal life. Africa hates gays almost collectively. Needless to say that religious people tend to hate gays, and I read a few days ago that more and more school children – 80% now in some schools – use the word "homo" as a curse. By all means, being straight is a lot simpler. It's less threatening and less problematic."

Jacob paused momentarily as his gaze drooped and he stared at the wooden floor of Seth's apartment for a minute. "Yeah," he continued with a soft voice, almost as if talking to himself. "Being gay sucks. Everybody seems to hate you. And the only times I felt excepted as a human being – a _gay_ human being – was at gay-oriented events; when I was surrounded 'by my kind'. Still though; still I don't regret being gay."

Jacob suddenly looked at Seth sharply, his gaze piercing Seth's with such intensity that Seth got a bit nervous, shuffling uneasily from side to side on the couch. Finally, Jacob sighed and shook his head.

"Even though the question is really complex, I can give a simple, straightforward answer. The answer is a definite _no_ – I _sure as hell_ do not regret being gay. But that answer is as simple as it is misleading."

Seth looked at Jacob questioningly, finally asking why that was the case. It seemed simple enough. "Are you actually regretting being gay, then," he finally asked. Jacob shook his head in response. "No; no, it's not like that." Jacob repositioned himself before continuing.

"See, If you ask me whether I regret being gay, you indirectly ask me whether I wouldn't want to be straight instead. And believe me, I did think about that. Asking myself if it wouldn't be easier; if it wouldn't be more straightforward. But you know what? Thinking about being straight always makes me feel like I'd be walking around missing my arms. I'd feel depraved of the one thing that identifies me like nothing else does. And you know why I'd feel that way? Because I'm _gay_."

"I know, that's a brilliant example of circular reasoning, and however stupid it sounds, it's nevertheless the truth. I can't think about being straight because I'm gay. My thinking is gay, my conduct is gay, and there's no way you're going to get that out of my system. The result is that, even when I'm doing my best, I just can't think like a straight man, because it implies thinking about women. If there's anything I'm less interested in, then it's _women_. Behavioural biology also scores highly, but women are definitely less interesting. Being straight just doesn't seem any fun to me."

"I get that," Seth replied, "but if you think about it in an abstract way?" Jacob shook his head in annoyance, his eyes darting back to meet Seth's gaze.

"Don't you get it? I _can't_ think of it in an abstract way. While I can deduce with my _mind_ that being straight is better in this relatively gay-hating world, my _heart_ overrides that deduction easily by telling me the one thing I know for sure: that women just don't do it for me; men do. It's men that I want. As I said, being straight just doesn't seem like fun to me. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do with boobs anyway?!"

Seth laughed at that comment and Jacob's squeezing motions as he cupped his pectorals, as if he were squeezing boobs. "Really, I have no idea what you find so attractive about them. It's just lumps of fat dancing around there, how on earth can that be attractive?"

Seth grinned at those comments. They seemed as ludicrous as they were understandable to him, as they were coming from a gay man. It didn't seem like Jacob was finished though. He heaved a sigh and took a breath before he continued.

"The reason I can't think about being straight in abstract terms isn't necessarily because I'm gay though. The fact that women don't excite me isn't the main reason. The main reason is that I already tried being straight once. Or rather, I was straight because I didn't realize I was gay."jaocb shook his head as he recollected those times. "It was horrible, Seth. An endless, deep, black pit of self-doubt."Jacob sighed, leaning his head on the palm of his hand.

"You don't know what it is to walk around, fantasizing about women without feeling anything. And all your friends keep pointing out to you those 'delicious pieces of meat', saying that you ought to talk to them; get their number; _fuck 'em_. But, you don't feel like doing so. And then, when you have overcome the initial doubts and find yourself on a great date with a great girl… picture yourself snuggling together on her bed, all comfy and cosy, watching TV. You inch ever closer, wrap your arm around her tender shoulders, and… nothing. You just feel nothing. Now you doubt your actions of course. Are you doing something wrong? Is something wrong with her perhaps?"

Jacob drooped his head momentarily before continuing in a soft voice: "Hunted by your fears, the eternal prey of your own doubt." He then raised his gaze again to meet Seth's lingering stare.

"At the time I always wondered why I doubted myself. I know I don't scare easily of such things. I've always been quite aggressive with asking people out. But that's exactly the point: whenever I was with a girl, I never really wanted to do anything with them. Not really, anyway. The abstract notion of having sex with them was nice, but only in the way of being able to say that I did it. And that's where the doubt always started. Always this on-going battle between my heart telling me it didn't feel right, and my mind urging me to have sex; because that's what men do: they do women." Jacob's head slowly drooped, but he raised it again as he continued speaking.

"If there really is such a thing, then _this_ is the purest form of the battle between heart and mind that I have ever experienced."

Jacob erected himself again and leaned into the soft cushions of Seth's couch. The red velvet felt soft against his bare arms and shoulders – he was wearing a tanktop; or a 'wifebeater', as they called it in 'Murica according to a former American roommate of his. Since a few weeks he'd started to wear them. It made him feel gay, and that feeling made him feel good. Made him feel proud; proud that he dared show who he was.

"Do you see why your question is difficult?" Jacob asked, and Seth returned a slow nod while Jacob resumed his monologue.

"I'm hopelessly biased because I lived the life of a straight man while I was gay; that felt horrible. Now that I know that I'm gay, there is nothing in the world that would make me swear off being gay. I'd be mad! Finally I found the object that excites me; finally I know who I am; finally I have feelings of hope, yearning and _love_ for other people that isn't based on family ties. All that doubt I had about asking women out is _gone_ when I approach a man to ask him out. That doubt is gone because I now know and understand what I want, and every fibre in my body urges me to go for it. Instead of battling all the time, my heart and mind are in line – "in sync" – and I have _never_ felt more at ease, relaxed and at peace than now. You have no idea how blissfully liberating it feels. I feel saved, like light rays protruding down to the deepest, darkest corners of my being; and here you ask me if I regret being gay. Do you see why my answer can never, _ever_ be 'yes'?" Again Seth nodded quietly.

"Even in the face of gay bashing, my people's name being used as a curse and multiple countries wanting to lock me up in the darkest corners of the filthiest prison they could possibly put me in, it's impossible for me to ever regret being gay. Too much good has come to me from it to ever be overridden by any negativity."

Jacob paused and stared out the window thoughtfully. In a darker, more sinister tone, he resumed: "I will say one thing about the hatred against gays though: it does not cause me to hate _myself_. I know there's a lot of gays out there that do – hate themselves that is – for what they are. But for me it's different. If anything, it causes me to hate the world back. A violent hatred, even," Jacob said softly, thinking about the dreams he had had.

"It's got to do a lot with fairness and what's right. Ultimately, it's about not being accepted as the human being that I am, and that notion enrages me. Dislike me all you want for my manners, opinions, choices or habits, but at least accept me for my race, look, ancestry and sexuality. Those are traits that I can't change. Even if I really wanted to, it's not possible. It's who I am. Hating me for it is unacceptable to me to the point where I start feeling my blood boil. It's just not _fair_, you know?"

All through that speech, at least up to the point where gay hatred got into the story, Jacob had sat up on the couch, his body erect, back straightened and chin held high. His eyes twinkled with an enthusiastic spark that occasionally had made his body tremble slightly under the weight of intense bliss freeing itself from his vocal chords. Seth nodded and smiled freely. It was good seeing his friend free of troubles and worries after such a long time of misery, and he felt good for him. Once gay hatred got in, however, Jacob noticeably slumped back into his prior posture, and a flicker of violent anger had appeared in his eyes on more than one occasion. His fists were clenched as he spat out those last words. Jacob stared blankly out the window.

"There's a conflict going on here of which I'm really getting sick of." Jacob turned his gaze sharply to meet Seth's eyes.

"I really want to be who I am, wherever I am. I want to be gay without feeling threatened. That feeling I told you about that I have when I'm at gay-oriented events? I want to _always_ feel that way. If I had a boyfriend, I'd want to walk with him down the street, holding hands, sit down on a bench and kiss him without having to be scared that somebody might punch me for it."

He paused for a short while as he considered his next words. "So, I made a decision, not _entirely_ brought on by Kellan Lutz."

Seth sniggered at that. Knowing Jacob, whatever the idea was, it had probably been provoked by some movie or scene with Kellan Lutz in it, and this rationalization had followed only later. Nevertheless, Seth recollected his thoughts and listened to Jacob.

"I want to take martial arts classes. I'm not sure yet what martial art it'll be, though I'm thinking of kickboxing."

This announcement had come as a surprise to Seth, though in hindsight it was perfectly logical considering the intro…

"So that's for self-defence purposes then, I assume?" Seth asked. Jacob nodded in reply.

"In principle, yes. And of course it's awesome to jump and kick and be able to beat like that". Both of them grinned as Seth nodded in agreement.

"Kind a cool, I must say. Hope you're not going to practice on me though!" Seth quickly retorted. Jacob waved that off.

"Nah, 'course not," he said with a grin, but then added: "Unless you anger me, in which case I'll be happy to kick your ass." They both laughed at the comment.

"It's still a long way off from that point, though. I'm a complete novice. The weight training has made me stronger, but I know nothing of self-defence. It will probably be tough in the beginning, but I'm looking forward to it. I find it all quite exciting" Jacob smiled as he said that.

"I don't necessarily want to fight people though, I just want to know that I can beat people up if a situation would arise in which that would be necessary. It's all about feeling secure. When I feel secure, I will be able to be who I want to be in public: a gay man."

They remained silent for a while as both of them let their thoughts linger. Seth considered Jacob's words, and decided to leave gay hatred for what it was, going on instead about the goodness of knowing who you are.

"Pity you didn't know earlier, eh," he replied, grinning sarcastically, his head dropping down but his eyes fixed on Jacob, who was now leaning back into the soft cushions again. In response, Jacob leaned his head on his arm, looked down at the floor and sighed, then raised his gaze to meet that of Seth.

"Funny you'd say that. I actually could have known easily. The signs were there at 14, but I didn't understand them. I just didn't realize it back then; that process took me six years. If not for my lack of interest in women, then frankly I could have known because of something else; something so crystal clear that sometimes it infuriates me that the true realization – when it finally dawned on me – only came a few months ago."

Seth looked at Jacob with a confused look and question marks in his eyes. Jacob continued: "Porn," he said, softly, with a hint of shame in his voice. Seth nodded, as if feeling to what this would lead. His head was slightly tilted to one side as he frowned and his look conveyed confused curiosity.

"You're the first and last person I will ever tell this, Seth, so please, handle this information with care." Seth nodded, all too eager to hear what was going to come. Jacob sighed and momentarily closed his eyes.

"In my whole life, I have _never_ – I repeat, _never_ – watched 'straight' porn. I have _only_ watched gay porn. I never even _dared_ search for straight porn. The thought of watching men having sex with women was simply too vulgar to bear. Every time I thought about it, I felt dirty. If anything, it made me feel the opposite of aroused. It simply wasn't right. But _gay _porn, well… that was something else! Nothing vulgar about it, nothing dirty – and hot as hell! It felt like the only way itshould be – the only way it _could_ be. Still does, too. And the kicker is that I already felt like that back then, when I was 14."

Seth's mouth had slowly opened in surprise at that statement, and like that, his mouth half open, he slowly shook his head in silence. Jacob continued.

"Can you imagine? From those early days, I was already watching gay porn. And never did I realize that I'm gay. In all honesty, the thought had sort of crossed my mind on a number of occasions, but I simply discarded the idea with a vague '_nah, can't be, pretty sure I'm not the only guy watching this_', which of course is complete bullshit. Most men shudder at the thought alone, in a similar way that I shudder at the thought of straight porn. I'd blame it on the fact that my emotional development was stymied when I was about 13, and only restarted when I was about 16. In those years I was a shy, terrified boy, always scared somebody would come up to me and show me 'who's the boss'. I guess I didn't really think about sex and relationships, even if all the kids around me were obsessed by it."

Jacob glanced outside, folding his legs over each other. Seth sat at the tip of the couch, his head extended far forward, mouth still half open and eyes popping out of his skull. Their gazes met as Jacob glanced upward. He stayed silent for a minute, in which Seth restored enough to say something himself.

"Amazing how you changed in the past year, and good to know you don't regret it. The reason I asked is because I wasn't sure how you'd felt about it all. I know some would ask it because they'd feel that being gay is wrong, but I assure you that's not why I asked. Just wanted to know how you are holding up." Jacob smiled at that, while Seth continued.

"Makes me wonder how your life would have been if you _had_ realized at that age." Jacob frowned momentarily.

"If that had been the case, I might have responded with 'yes' to your question, since I wouldn't have known what it is to lead a straight life in a gay man's body. I wouldn't have had this grand revelation, nor would I have felt the happiness of finally understanding who and what I am. My personality would have been shaped completely differently. It's possible that I would have hated being gay."

Seth considered that thought. "Yeah, I guess. That sounds eerily familiar though. I remember your initial reactions after you found out and came out to me. You really weren't thrilled about it at all. If anything, you were heart-broken."

There was a big truth to that thought, Jacob realized as he stared at Seth. Thinking about the period before he came out felt like thinking about a completely different person – one that had no idea about himself; who was just living a dream.

_Pathetic, really_, Jacob thought with a smirk. That guy lived a lie, basically. And that episode with Bella? He wouldn't go as far as saying it was disgusting, but it was distasteful to say the least. And all the while that guy was thinking _How come the sex isn't any good?_ He thought he wanted a more energetic woman, something Mediterranean perhaps. Well what do you know, you're _gay_ dude! It wasn't female pep he longed for; it was muscular strength. Jacob chuckled at the thought, causing Seth to stir. He was still waiting for Jacob to answer him. Jacob noticed that as he raised his head to glance at Seth.

"It's funny in all its tragedy. You know, that day at the airport, back in April, and later that week at the bar in Stockholm? It felt like the ground shifted away from under my feet. Like I was hovering in the ice cold air of Antarctica, held in place by an invisible hand, then mercilessly dropped a hundred miles before hitting the freezing water, left to drown in the confusing mess that had suddenly, out of nowhere, become my life. That moment, when you realize that whoever you are, doesn't really exist in that way you always thought is a moment of... I'm not even sure what it was. I felt dread in my stomach; I felt sick to my very core." Seth was looking at Jacob with fascinated worry as Jacob continued his monologue.

"Fascinating how I was a completely different person back then. I felt like the entire world had betrayed me, as if danger lured from all corners of the room and there was no way to escape. And how could I even," Jacob asked to nobody in particular, throwing his hands up in the air in a dramatic gesture of faked helplessness.

"The thing I was trying to escape from was _myself_; my own gayness. And in that attempt to escape, I started drinking. God knows how much money I spent on that. Hell, I think I actually got most of my drinks from friends. I didn't mind, of course. I just kept chugging, desperately trying to get rid of that heavy load on my shoulders. Boy, did that slap me in the face in the end. Yeah, it'd be an understatement to say that I felt miserable. But thank god that's over now."

Jacob sighed. He momentarily looked down at the floor as he fumbled with one of the cords of his hoody that lay beside him on the couch. He then raised his gaze to look over at Seth, who looked at him intently, nodding ever so slightly as if to approve the conclusion of the story. He smiled. Jacob smiled back.

"You do know you are my best friend, right? Without getting sentimental, I hope you know I love you. As a friend, of course, but… well you get the gist I guess. I wouldn't know how I would have turned out without your listening ear, advice and help." Seth just smiled, nodded.

"Of course I know. It was nothing, and I'd do it again a hundred times if necessary."

Inside Seth's student apartment, the air felt cleared and light as they stared at each other. Both their gazes radiated a soothing calmness. Outside, the last clouds had disappeared and the sun, an orange orb, was setting.

* * *

**12.**

Finally this year was about to end. It had been long and cruel, and Jacob was happy it was over. A new year was about to start: 2013, and this year was going to be better. Jacob knew it. It _had_ to be. Another '2012' would be a disaster as he remembered the pain, hurt and endless torture of March, April, May, June and July, until finally, sometime in August, he broke down and got it all out of his system.

Now it was the end of December. Amazing how fast the last months had gone, how much he had seen and experienced. It seemed like the small, petrified boy he had been in January had grown into a much more self-conscious, knowledgeable man. Feeble as he had been, so strong did he feel now, knowing full well what he wanted and how he wanted it. And on top of all that, his dietary changes and intense exercising had given him a body that much more closely resembled the body of his fantasies. With that, he might actually have a chance of attracting the guys he longed for. Or at least, that's what he hoped. Tonight, _this_ night, was to be a test for that particular change in his life.

Together with some friends of him, Jacob would go to a gay party in his hometown. These parties had quite a reputation. Everybody that went there had found them enjoyable, gays and straights alike. For the gays it was a place to meet up, chat, kiss and fuck. For the straights it was a visit to a different world that had, for some reason, piqued their interest. Not all of Jacob's friends were gay, but, like the other straights at that party that night, they had been curious and Seth was one of them. Jacob didn't mind it. He was only too happy to have many friends around him at that place. While he had been dating and such, he hadn't had any experience with gay parties. Feeling like a young fish in a pond filled with predators, it was nice to have some familiar faces around.

They arrived at the club around eleven o'clock, and a line had already formed in front of the entrance. Slowly they shuffled inside, happy to get out of the cold evening. It had been drizzling a bit, with patches of momentary wet snow here and there. The weather was quite lousy, all in all. Fortunately, inside it was rather warm; or perhaps _hot_ would have been a better term, with all the guys dancing around, embracing each other, some of them kissing. Those were couples, though.

_Lucky them_, Jacob thought as he watched them from the balcony, where he stood with several of his friends. All were seemingly enjoying themselves, laughing and talking, drinking beers and pointing at people.

In all the turmoil of the party, Jacob was feeling surprisingly happy, exhilarated even. For the first time in his life, he felt like he could simply pick a guy, walk up to him, and know that something might happen. That was so unlike the situation he had gotten used to, that it took him a few minutes of quiet contemplation to fully internalize the notion. But when it had hit him, a grin had appeared on his face. One that was so big that some of his friends had noticed it and asked what was going on. Seth was the first to have noted it.

"Hey, what are you grinning about?" He looked about the dance floor, one flight below them. "Where is the hot guy you've set your eyes on?"

Jacob grinned even more and shot Seth a teasing look. "No, it's not that I have seen some suave guy, it's that I can pick whomever I want without fearing that they'll be straight. In here, it's the _gays_ that rule, not the straights. And if you're straight, I chat you up and you dislike that, you shouldn't have come. Feels great!" and he ripped out a thunderous laughter of joy.

"I'm going down, wanna come?" Jacob then added, nudging Seth mischievously, throwing him a look of playful sensuality as he started walking toward the stairs. Seth replied with a grin, waltzing happily after Jacob. They both descended the stairs, Seth stalking Jacob closely, moving fluidly over the dance floor to the bar to get another drink. That would be Jacob's fourth and Seth's fifth beer that night.

Sipping their beer, leaning against the wall, they stood along the edge of the dance floor, observing the dancing crowd like a lion choosing its prey among a herd of zebras. As he let his gaze move over the countless heads, his eyes stuck to one particular guy. His hair was black, the head wobbling back and forth as his body was slaving away to the thumping rhythm of the music. He wore a black shirt, buttoned up until roughly the middle of his sternum, exposing the upper part of a seemingly muscular chest. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing two tanned, slightly hairy forearms, thick with muscles that would surely allow him to grip _things_ quite potently. And the parts of his arms that _were_ covered up, namely his biceps and triceps, were sure to be equally developed.

Those few things were pretty much all Jacob could see amongst the tumultuously moving mass. And as Jacob stood there casually, left leg propped against the wall, eyeing the sexy stud and his suggestive way of dancing, he could feel saliva pooling on his tongue; his inner wolf was hungry and had found a nice piece of young, fresh meat. At that moment the guy's head turned and pierced Jacob's gaze, just as Jacob brought his beer to his lips. The glass halted mid-sip and, as if glued to his lips, stayed where it was. Several tantalizing moments passed.

_Look at each other once, checking out. Look at each other twice, interest_.

That's what people had told him before the party. It was the way to know if and when to approach a guy.

_Come on then, look at me again_, Jacob thought, still staring intently at the head that was rocking to and fro on the rhythm of the music, but his bladder was giving him some warning signals that had to be dealt with first. Seth was standing next to him, looking the other way. Jacob tore his gaze off the dancing delicacy and poked Seth with his free hand, handing him the empty glass when he finally caught his attention.

"I gotta pee," he said, while already walking towards the restroom, not noticing that two brown eyes were now following _his_ moves intently.

Jacob headed over to the restroom, wobbling slightly after that last beer. He managed to arrive at the toilet stall without any major injuries, slammed the door shut and had a pee. He didn't even really notice the constant moaning of fulfilled pleasure around him anymore. There was more fucking going on than peeing, most probably.

A few moments later, feeling highly relieved, he emerged again, went to the sink to wash his hands, and dry them using a paper towel. That said, he made it to the sink, but never made it to the paper towels. As he leaned onto the sink, he sighed and looked down at the drain. The sound of a door opening and closing was lost in the continual sounds of satisfaction around him. After a minute or so, in which he tried to wake up his slumbering senses, he opened the tap and let the cool water flow down. As he stuck his hands in the cold stream of water and started rubbing them with some soap, he heard a soft "hey" next to him. Surprised, his hands still in the cold stream of water, he looked up, in the direction from where the sensual voice had come.

The guy from the dance floor stood there, watching him intently. From close by he looked even more delicious than from far off. Contrary to when Jacob had seen him earlier, he was now half naked, his black shirt draped loosely around his neck; like a towel, as if he had just come from a swim, his skin still moist with drops of water scattered over his body like small, tingling pearls. Jacob gulped as he saw the muscles next to him, and said "hi" quietly, his gaze fixed on a set of mouth-watering, torturously well-defined abs that were less than a meter from him. Jacob licked his lips at the sight.

After a few moments he was finally able to break out of his trance and stare the guy in the eyes. They were lovely: brown, glittering in the light of the restroom's dingy lamps that were hanging low from the ceiling. Two black eyebrows pressed down on those eyes, making the eyes seem like mere slits. His hair was black and combed forward with gel holding it all together. It resembled the hairdo of the guy he had met in Sweden, but this guy's muscles were much tenser, much more expressive in that lovely primitive masculinity that Jacob found so enthralling. His biceps were _very_ mature, and he had an impressive set of shoulders to boot. The neck was quite broad and only emphasized the guy's muscular exterior, but with a certain subtlety that Jacob enjoyed. And between those biceps, below those shoulders and neck, was one of the most glorious chests he had seen as yet; and below that chest, were abs that were curved smoothly yet firmly, and could be seen relaxing, tensing and flexing with every abdominal move the guy made as he leaned nonchalantly against the paper towel dispenser, as if forming a barrier of lust through which Jacob, quite honestly, didn't even _want_ to break through. Instead, he looked back at the sink, took his hands out of the cold stream of water, closed the tap and calmly leaned onto the sink, his gaze now directed at the stranger. Both of them were smiling, Jacob with shy hesitation, his spectator with a broad smile of cunning mischief, the left corner of his mouth curled up in calculating expectation.

_This is my chance_.

Jacob released the sink as he straightened his back in an attempt to make himself look bigger. Turning his whole body, he was now facing the guy head-on. Slowly but steadily, he walked towards him, closing the gap that was between them. Every step that decreased their distance increased tension twofold. Finally, Jacob stopped and leaned against the paper towel dispenser, next to the unknown beauty. Their shoulders nearly touched as their gazes shot at one another like laser beams, meeting in the middle with a jolt of energy that backfired and hurled a shock straight down along their spine that erupted in a _hardening_ burst of tense excitement. Jacob shuddered.

"I saw you on the dance floor. You have some nice moves," Jacob said, cold as ice, but with a smile and a sparkle in his eyes that, he hoped, would seem irresistible.

"And I saw you _from_ the dance floor. Didn't see you dancing, but I bet you have some nice moves of your own," the guy replied with a roguish sparkle in his eyes and his mouth curled into a mischievous grin.

"I do," Jacob answered softly. Pushing himself of the paper towel dispenser he slowly leaned into the guy, shoulders and chest touching lightly, his head slightly extended and hanging over the guy's broad left shoulder as he brought his mouth, half-open and moist with animalistic drive, to the guy's ear.

"Want me to show 'em to you?"

The guy merely smiled and rotated his head to the right, so he now looked a teasingly smiling Jacob into the eyes. His answer was not of words; he speedily tilted his head and got it into position, then instantly kissed Jacob. And as he started kissing, his tongue already playfully poking Jacob's lips, he pressed his left hand against Jacob's chest, rotating Jacob and pressing him with his back against the paper towel dispenser. _Domination_ was written all over that possessive move.

Aroused by that sensual strength, he mechanically hauled his arms around the guy and grasped him in a tight embrace as Jacob's animal erected itself, howling blissfully as the guy that pressed their chests together broke of the kissing and bit Jacob in his neck tenderly. As his hand travelled down to Jacob's pants, he love-bit his way to Jacob's ear, softly nibbling it and finally suggesting what Jacob had been hoping for all along: "Wanna take it to a more private location?"

Jacob nodded, softly groaning with the delight the guy was causing him, when abruptly he tore himself off Jacob, grabbed Jacob's shirt between his pectorals, and while piercing his gaze with his enchanting brown eyes, yanked him the dispenser and dragged him into one of the toilet stalls. He practically threw Jacob inside as he lunged in after him and slammed the door shut, immediately grabbing Jacob once again at his shirt and locked their chests together in a frenzy of kissing and touching. Jacob was back in the woods of Sweden, both preyed upon and hunting prey, like two adolescent male lions playing in the warm sun of the African wilderness. Their moaning joined the choir of groaning and whining already present when Jacob had entered the club's restroom.

The stranger turned him around and pressed him against his body forcefully, Jacob's back now against his powerful chest, hot with anticipation, as he slammed both of them into one of the stall's Perspex walls. Trapped between the man and the wall, he could feel a warm stiffness in the guy's pants, pressed against his ass as the stranger's embrace enclosed his waist, curled around the lower edges of his shirt, and with one smooth movement ripped Jacob's shirt over his head and threw it on the toilet's water reservoir.

Next, the stranger's arms slowly massaged Jacob's now bare-naked chest, climbing and descending his torso until his left hand stayed behind on his left nipple while the right kept following Jacob's ribs like a young girl jumping from white line to white line on a zebra crossing. The hand that lingered on the nipple sudden brutally gripped the nipple, making Jacob yelp harshly. When the guy unceremoniously twisted his nipple, the blunting force of sheer pain took Jacob entirely by surprise. He arched his back as he tensed all available muscles in his body to deal with the sudden burning ache.

In-between chocked-back whines and yelps, however, came out moans, too: the other hand, roaming Jacob's abs, had reached the edge of Jacob's belt, moving forward and backward over that belt with the thumbs mischievously prying around the edges of Jacob's underwear. IT slid down and cupped Jacob's hard dick through the fabric of his pants, squeezing lightly so that Jacob whimpered with the pain and pleasure assaulting his intoxicated mind simultaneously.

His nipples was suddenly released as that hand joined his brother at Jacob's nether regions as Jacob whimpered with excited joy, still trapped between the heaving strength behind him and the cold wall in front of him. Suddenly, the two hands grabbed his thighs, followed the belt to the front and opened the belt's buckle with an energetic jolt, then continued to playfully unbutton his pants and zip open his fly. With one formidable pull he yanked Jacob's pants down to the floor and he could feel a cold breeze coming from under the toilet stall's door as he was reminded that they were in a club's restroom, with people continuously walking in and out, drunken, high, horny; walking in for a piss, a dump or a quick fuck. But Jacob didn't mind; a rush of excitement filled his veins and he moaned softly under the pressure of the man behind him.

Almost bare naked, he now stood in front of the muscly man, back against chest, so that he could feel the irregular pattern of the washboard abs against his skin. He shuddered, as the arms that played actively around his thighs, undoing more and more layers of clothes suddenly shot up and held Jacob around his waist, the palms of his hands on his chest, and a sweet voice whispering "You're not getting cold, are you?"

Shuddering a second time out of tense excitement, Jacob tilted his head back and laid it softly on the right shoulder of the strong man that held him from behind, turning his head and affirmatively biting the stranger's neck. While he couldn't see the guy's face, he felt the muscles of the guy's lower jaws tense and relax as his mouth curled into a smile and a soft groan of pleasure escaped his throat when Jacob took hold of the guy's primitivity and stroked it gently at first, more roughly as time went by.

The hands shot back to where they were before and pulled off Jacob's dark blue underwear, then pressed Jacob's body, the hands clasping his thighs, back against the man's body as he felt the throbbing stiffness now against his bare ass. But not for long, as one arm left the fervid embrace and undid the guy's own pants and underwear. Both slid to the floor as Jacob felt the warmth now teasingly against his own soft skin. A whisper in his right ear – "Do you want me to give it to you, hm?" – made Jacob shudder with blissful expectation, replying "_yes!_" with a soft, coarse voice, his throat clenched with joyous suspense.

A pleased smirk appeared on the boyish man's face when he turned Jacob around, so that they were now facing each other, their excited beasts greeting each other as they danced around each other, sometimes avoiding each other's gaze, sometimes touching each other's heads in quiet anticipation of what was going to come next. The two men did the same. They looked each other deeply in the eyes while the stranger's hand stroked Jacob's neck softly and tenderly, smiling lovingly. He then pulled them together and eyes closed as lips touched and tongues danced around each other frantically, like the waves of a stormy ocean.

As their lips parted again, Jacob slithered down the guy's body, his right arm trailing after him, stroking his chest and abs while Jacob filled his mouth with rigid masculinity, doing his job with a fiery passion that had his lover groan and whimper as loins filled with delight. The guy's right hand travelled to Jacob's head, gripping it forcefully and subjecting it to the rhythm favoured by the guy; the left hand trailed to Jacob's hand, which was still squeezing the guy's chest, and gripped it, pressing it against his own chest strongly. Jacob felt the guy's body convulse slightly when he fooled around. A soft moan escaped tightly clenched jaws – because it felt _so good_. The hand that had held his hair firmly now appeared on his neck and grasped it hard, nails digging into flesh ever so lightly, now forcing Jacob to rock back and forth with increasing speed, a rhythm set for him so that he just let it happen, his male companion's groaning becoming both louder and more intense as the act continued and he started bucking Jacob, softly at first, but with more strength and possession the longer it continued.

Out of nowhere, the hand that held Jacob's neck disappeared and re-appeared under his right arm, pulling him upwards, at which point his once-filled mouth, now empty and dry, was refilled with a new passion as the guy kissed him. Groaning into each other's mouths, they shared their passion as arms and hands were left to explore backs, heads, necks, chests. And as they broke contact, they shared another look, and Jacob leaned into the man. "I need you to give me all you got… but not here."

Slightly confused, obviously intrigued, fantasy holding him firmly in its grip as his basal primitivity tensed and hardened under the load of fiery desire, the guy looked Jacob in the eyes. He leaned forward while clasping Jacob's shoulders strongly so that their chests and nether regions touched and Jacob felt both their throbbing: "Lead me onward."

That night, Jacob didn't go home alone. With him was his stranger. _His_ guy. A guy that was not only sweet, but also looked _really_ good; a guy that found Jacob as beautiful as Jacob had found him when their eyes had met earlier that evening.

When they got to Jacob's place it was about 3AM, but there was no time to sleep. As they hollered through the door, kissing and hugging, they didn't waste time to flick on the light. They took off their jackets hastily and continued their animalistic pursuit that had started at the club. They stumbled into Jacob's bed, laughing, grinning, groaning with pleasure, groping each other in both tender and frantic embraces as they kissed passionately, reaching for each other's shirts with feverish resolve. Off went Jacob's partner's black shirt, and exposed was a sight that was already known to Jacob, but hadn't become any less amazing in those 30 minutes between Jacob's bed and the club.

With enthusiastic playfulness, Jacob attacked the flexing abs with his tongue; the abs that supported the mighty pectoral muscles that formed the wonderful chest that was hovering over him. The powerful taste of masculinity scorched Jacob's tongue as he, utterly entranced, in a fit of hot rage, gave his tongue no rest while descending down the washboard that was the stud's belly. And as he went down, his shirt went up, pulled over his head by his lover with remarkably calm focus. Now both of them were half-naked, hot and raging, as the stud groped for Jacob's head and feverishly stroked it as Jacob's hand met sexual arousal, having travelled farther down the smooth six pack; a stop his head and tongue would soon arrive at. Those were still higher-up, following the smooth curves of a perfectly symmetrical six-pack, until they got back on track on the midline and followed it down to where pleasure was to be had.

Belt buckles were undone and flies zipped down with smooth speediness as blue jeans slipped down and exposed the tender flesh that they held for ransom. Jacob's right hand had arrived while the head was on its way and the left hand grasped the guy's right thigh, massaging it enthusiastically, making his body jerk with delight. As his companion moaned under the touch of Jacob's hand, murmuring soft words of delight and increasingly craving for more, his body jerked as he abruptly erected himself, flexing his abs when his torso got up. Jacob, surprised by the sudden moment, was momentarily ripped out of his enthrallment when a hand roughly pushed him against the bed, slamming him onto his back and he found himself under the heaving chest as the last of their clothing met the cold floor beside Jacob's bed.

In the dim light of an outside streetlight shining through a gap in Jacob's curtains, as if it were a spotlight, they made love to each other. Groans of satisfaction filled the quiet night and the bed creaked under the slowly, but steadily increasing rate at which they did it. And as it all unfolded, it felt right. It had hurt at first; the guy had entered him, slowly and while holding Jacob tenderly as he gazed at Jacob's face, reading his reactions as his animal stalked into the cave that held Jacob's inner wolf, waiting for its welcome visitor. And then they met. And it had felt special. And the visitor wolf had slowly retreated, but had lunged back at his host at the first sign of gratified pleasure. A quiet whimper escaped Jacob's lips, a feverish moan his companion's. They filled the silent void of Jacob's apartment as the guy moved back and forth. And Jacob was in heaven. Never in his life had he felt something so intimate; an act in which he felt so _close_ to his partner.

With every minute that went by, their play got more intense. Sweat stood on his partner's forehead as his lower body rocked back and forth with an increasing rate; but Jacob _asked_ for it. Asked to be _fucked_ the way he had never been; the way _he had never done_ but had always wanted to. Ground to dust under the forceful weight of muscles pushing him down so that the only thing he could do was_ obey_ as the alpha male of his pack asserted his dominance and filled his every carnal need with an animalistic drive that would get Jacob whimpering at his feet.

The pained creaking of the bed got louder and the moaning of the two got more incessant and direct, filled with passionate craving as they unleashed their inner wolves at each other. The grip the guy had on Jacob grew stronger as he held him by his arms, pinning them above Jacob's head. Jacob's legs were bent over his strong companion's shoulders, so that a murmuring pain, mixed with shots of ecstasy, lunged at Jacob's intoxicated mind. Like wolves howling to the moon together, one reinforcing the howling of the other, Jacob and his lover answered each other with intensifying cries. For every "_Oh_" the guy uttered, Jacob replied with an equally intense "_oh god_", and as their play grew more forceful and the man asserted his dominance over Jacob with rising vigour, Jacob's whimper grew more pained, but always mixed with delight. And as they mixed, pain and bliss reinforced and boosted each other, so that Jacob clenched his fists in elated agony, his mouth half-open and moist with excitement, moaning and whimpering at the treatment he was getting from the sweating, groaning muscles behind him.

Finally, the callings reached their peak, laden with a yet unfulfilled desire to _go ahead_ as sexual tension soared to its maximum. The man removed his arms so that Jacob was free to use them again. The guy supported himself on Jacob's shoulders, glittering with sweat from the physical exertion. Meanwhile Jacob put his arms to good use, groping himself, moaning under the tension he caused himself.

His moaning joined that of his partner, so that they were not replying to each other but crying out in unison at an empty silence in Jacob's room that was almost entirely eradicated; blown out of the window by the deep groans of two men coming together in harmonious domination and submission.

_Fuck me_ were the last thoughts in Jacob's mind, his lips loosely mouthing those words between the pained vocalisations of desire, as his biceps and triceps flexed with increasing rapidity, when that moment of blankness arrived that had both of them moan with deep, thrilled passion. And when it happened, their mouths open, their eyes closed as both of them abruptly halted their pumping and rocking and within a few seconds collapsed on each other as rushes of ecstasy filled their body and mind. Jacob laid still, one hand held where it had all happened and the other holding his man's strong forearm, now relaxed and soft.

While he lay there, he felt a cold but wonderful sensation coming from his source of joy that had his body jerk momentarily; the guy was lapping up his white seed, cleaning his cock with a reverent passion that made Jacob smile. That same wet coldness followed the midline of his belly up, when finally he felt a playful tongue in his mouth. They kissed, deeply and passionately, as they lay on Jacob's bed, still gasping for air, relieved and happy.

Then, they did it again. They kept doing it until early morning when finally they just lay against each other, tightly pressed, back to chest, spooning. Jacob was held in a tight embrace, and Jacob held the arms that held him, as his breathing grew quieter and calmer. At last, they fell asleep, the breathing synchronised, a veil of tired bliss covering their eyes.

* * *

**A/N:** I would appreciate a (short) review to hear your thoughts!


	4. Epilogue

**_ Unleashing the animal_**

* * *

**_Epilogue_**

* * *

**1.**

Silence. All that woke him was a ray of light. Warm and reddish; an unclouded winter morning. He shyly opened his left eye, and slowly he became conscious of the world around him. He opened his right eye, and expected the boring sensation of a hangover-headache. There was nothing. He erected his body, slowly, when he became aware of warmth next to him. He turned his head, and saw a beautiful, sleeping body. He stroked it, gave its warm thigh a small kiss, and got out of bed. As his soft feet touched the cold, unforgiving floor, he shuddered as a spiky tingle launched itself from his lower back up to his neck.

He stood up and walked to the kitchenette. He took the half-full pack of coffee and emptied it into his coffee machine, then turned it on. He sat at his table, and stared at the sleeping body in his bed, admiring its youthful beauty. A smell of coffee swirled in the room, and a few minutes later he poured his first cup of the day; a beautiful day, the first day of a glorious, New Year. It had snowed that night, but the sky was crystal clear. The sun came up, flooding the room in a mysterious, red hue through his small bedroom window.

As he stood at that window with his cup of coffee, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He felt it running down his back when a second hand appeared on the scene: both of them were moving forward, over his belly. The warm body of the bed was behind him, grasping him. A strong embrace of moderately hairy, manly arms, attached to an muscly body. A muscly body with beautiful, smoothly curved abs, now pressed against his back so strongly it made Jacob groan with quiet pleasure. Slow, calm breathing that moved a muscly chest up and down ever so slightly. His embrace was tender and loving, but with a manly strength that made Jacob shudder with intimate bliss.

Together they stood at the window. He smiled, as the one sentence that caused him so much grief the past year slid before his eyes once more and faded away, not to return for a long time. "I am gay", he thought, smiling lightly. What was once a stinging thorn, a potent poison of confusing destructiveness, had turned into a tender kiss of passionate love.

* * *

**A/N:** I would appreciate a (short) review to hear your thoughts!


End file.
